This is the 2023 Tuff-Girl Poster print.
In keeping with the 1960’s - early 1970’s era of inspiration I drew upon 2 sources of inspiration.
First is the 1969 cover of
Action Comics No. 373. Pencilled by Curt Swan and Inked by Neal Adams. It was after a little internet research, that I had learned to whom to credit the art. I think perhaps with Superman in the bottom right corner, that one could spot Swan’s style. What I think threw me off that scent and into thinking that the penciler was emulating Swan’s style was the not-typical-Curt-Swan’s-Supergirl face of the central figure. Knowing what I know now, that’s Adams’ style bleeding into the face render.
In my original, concept sketches, you can see me attempting to stick closely to the Supergirl design with a skirt, inspired boot designs and the same hair do. I would have added a cape if that was something with which Tuff-Girl accessorized her costume.
The secondary inspiration is the promotional poster for the James Bond movie
Dr. No by artist, Mitchell Hooks and designed by David Chasman.
As I have developed and improved as an artist, the more that I like art styles that are rougher and incorporate peeks of the art processes or, as they say, the artist’s hand. In the poster version with five different spot colors for the figures, the black screen is Hook’s drawing.
For my base drawing, I broke Swan’s Supergirl pose with more asymmetry and contra-posto to have her stepping out of the hole instead of her hands and feet holding open the hole. The torn hole, is less the white framing device of the DC Comics cover, and as a result is a stand-in for a sun burst motif. To make the rough drawing feel communicate, I used a black Prisma Color art pencil on a 9” x 12” piece of water color paper, expecting to enlarge the image of the print.
In my digital color of the art, I soon jumped away from borrowing the monochromatic or spot color look, and settled with playing with the idea of the interaction of only printed magenta and yellow screens underneath the black screen of the drawing- no cyan screen. With different levels of magenta and yellow there are ranges of pinks, oranges and reds to play with. The direct painted version seemed to be lacking. So knowing that I was playing with the 2-screens idea, it was a short creative leap to have Photoshop create coarse half tones of the magenta and yellow.
Siding with the
Dr. No poster, I silhouette Tuff-Girl against white rather than the black of the Action Comics cover for a back-lit effect. The triangular page tears working with the white background further implies the sun burst motif, intentional or not.
For my convention exclusive version, I recolored the surrounding “page” to a near-black, deep rose color and pulled back to fit the top-left tag while revealing more of the art.
I often try to have my Tuff-Girl posters feature her with her dog Wichita. I’m sorry that I opted not to include Wichita in the final image. She threw the composition off balance.
