Blart #12: Harley Sees the Year Out With a Bang

Happy new year!  Here's hoping that it's a lot better than last year.  Not that there was much wrong with last year, but there wasn't much right with it either.  Ultimately, for a year with as cool a number as 2010 it was pretty bland and forgettable.  I had a close friend lose their job, a close friend of the family died, and we discovered that the majority of the windows in the house need replacing as they're rotten through and through (There were other things, but you don't get to hear them) On the plus side we got a new fridge, my wife found a hobby she's pretty good at (again - she's good at everything), and my best friend had a son (well, he didn't, but his fiancée is pretty wonderful too) .  I drew a bit.  OK, I drew a lot.

It seemed to me that I should finish the year where I write 2010; or 2k10 as was also done; after my signature with a piece of work that was started, but up until now not finished.  It was the next Blart along from Wolverine; Harley Quinn of Batman infamy.  I should point out at this point that the name I use on this blog has nothing to do with her, and my use of it predates the character by 3 years.  One day I'll cover where the moniker came from, but today is not that day.  Right now we're discussing Harley Quinn:

So, there you have it, my first finished pen and ink illustration since the last one. I'm honestly not sure if I like the result or not. In fact I actually prefer how it looked at an earlier stage (Which you can see below). It doesn't really look like it did in my head, but I like it enough that I might do it again at some point with paints (fake ArtrRage paints in all likelihood).

Would you like to see the blow by blow of it's creation? I really don't care if you do or not, I'm still writing one. If you honestly don't want to read it I won't hold it against you if you duck out now. Off you go, the rest of us will be fine without you.

So the inspiration for this obviously comes primarily from the subject of the Blart, with references to Janet Jackson (this album cover) and old Wonderbra advertisements.

Pretty early on the idea of holding cartoon bombs; actually early grenades; in front of her breasts came to mind - She's quite often depicted with a cartoon style arsenal. Here are some early sketches (actually, these are all the preliminaries I did that are clearly related, though I did more you've already seen that didn't visually have any apparent link.

The first of these - The one at the bottom where she's kneeling - was done back in September, so the idea's been floating around a while. The last of them, on the right, was done in early November.  The one where she's topless didn't start out as a Harley Quinn picture, but after I'd drawn it it seemed like it would be a good fit,  so I added the pigtails. That's where the pose came from, which eventually led to the idea of someone else holding the bombs and harking back to the Janet Jackson "HandBra" image. I should mention that that is the best sketch I've ever done without reference of any kind; I think it's pretty good.  The one on the right had a small amount of reference for the hands and gun.  That sketch led to the following.

Yes, that's a grid you see behind her - I had the notion of using a real model as reference for her waist/torso/breast/head ratio, using the grid to make sure everything was the right size. I wasn't happy with the result (although when it's small like this it looks better than I remembered). And there I stopped - I wasn't happy with it, so I just left it in the "I'll get back to this" pile, where it sat until Wednesday night when I opened up the sketchbook and started sketching over the top of the last one. In between the sketch in November and Wednesday I had the idea of the Joker's hands holding the bombs, so I got some reference shots of me wearing rubber gloves and holding one of my son's soccer-balls (I had to phrase that carefully). I'd have been better off without the gloves it turned out. Anyway, this was the result:

Which I sort of love, even though in retrospect I drew Harley's hand far larger than I did the Joker's. I just noticed that, drat. I added the "Bang" flag coming off the gun because, well, it's the sort of thing she does :)

So after that I started inking... Not much else to say there. Here's an in progress followed by the finished inked work:

The finished one is enlargeable, and to be honest I like it a lot more than the way it turned out after I scanned it in and added the black background and halftone shading.  You'll note I got lazy and didn't finish the folds of the cloth from her half removed cat-suit - if I ever revisit this I'll add them in, but I never found a good reference for it, and my wife doesn't posses a cat-suit to model one (mores the pity...).  And revisit it I may, I think this might work really well painted, but painting takes a bit longer than inking (which takes long enough), and I wanted this one to be the last piece of 2010, which it is.

So, have a great year, I hope your hangover isn't too dreadful :)