Valentine's Day 2016

I wasn’t sure going into the end of 2015 that I would be able to either come up with an idea for a project, or complete a project, in time for Valentine’s Day this year. But, as it is seldom seen, I did stumble into a minor project of sorts.

The prospect of depicting Hancock in more modern and casual clothes became very intriguing. That clicked with me for the last Valentine’s Day picture I did, the one featuring Anzu back in 2014, as it came from the same inspiration.

At first I didn’t really have a setting in mind. I flipped between my usual no-background and doing some sort of pastoral scene (I’ve been in that frame of mind of late). At some point I considered making it an extension of Anzu’s 2014 picture, have Athena sitting to one side. Her pose would have been the same either way, but I have her hair blowing to the right (her left) because I was going to have her seated to Anzu’s left. I sort of abandoned that idea, mainly because of my decision on what she’d be wearing, but I left that original setup for her hair.

Thinking about her clothes, I wanted to do something a little more contemporary and fashionable for her. Thinking on the setting still, it’s a Valentine’s Day image, so unless she’s in the southern hemisphere or something like that, it’s probably cold. That was a missed detail for Anzu’s piece in 2014, as I had her in a halter top showing her midriff, and a skirt. For Athena this time I went with a turtleneck sweater. The collar is one of those large, draping ones you sometimes see on the designer models. The sleeves I actually decided to do because for January I had a picture Helga von Vogelweide of the Trinity Blood novels as my wallpaper (shown right) on my laptop where she’s wearing a fur lined coat (somewhat debatable if it’s a winter coat even though she is in a winter setting). For what it’s worth the sweater Athena is wearing here is probably cashmere, possibly something more exotic like mink.

The pants design is based on several real-world examples, most prominently a Polo Ralph Lauren set on Amazon that at the time were around $900. It had the same decorative big box-stitch up the sides, stopping just past the knee. On the Ralph Lauren versions that terminating point on the calf is then laced up with a boot-cut finish to the leg. I replaced the laces with a covered zipper. The ones on Amazon were deerskin. It might be fitting to imagine Athena’s are snakeskin, and I don’t know if that’d be any less absurd than anything else you could pull from either my story or One Piece.

Minor detail, as you can imagine she is holding a bag of homemade chocolates in one hand, also holding one of those chocolates in her fingers with the other hand.

As I indicated before, the original plan was that thematically Athena would be sitting beside Anzushiro along the same seawall-type structure. Specifically, she is sitting on the top step, hence the positioning of her legs. Ended up reworking the positioning and angle of her left leg a number of times because I couldn’t get it right. And that is how you get this;

In the “True Grade” version there is a lower half to this work. You can see clearly in it that she is sitting on steps, and the full detail of the pants leg can be seen, including the boot-cut finish. She will be wearing ankle boots based off a Prada design meant to evoke the pirate theme. For arguments sake you can say they’re snakeskin boots. There will be flowers and gifts on the steps beside her feet. You will also see in that version that she is wearing a ring on her left ring finger. But obviously, you don't see that here. Why?

Technical details, you can probably tell this is a "rougher" version than normal. My image productivity software and devices are on my desktop. The hardware was easy enough to just use with my laptop. But software isn't so portable (unless you pay the arm it takes for Adobe CC). I got into a project build with my desktop that stalled out, and I haven't had the time needed to migrate back to a more conventional build. As a result, I didn't have my usual suite of tools to clean up the scan as I normally do. Couple that with the aforementioned issues of getting the positioning of her left leg right, the original scan has a lot of erased pencil lines. If I had more time I probably would have retraced the whole thing either on a new page or just gone over it with a dark pen. But, I don't have enough time to do that this weekend.

More art related details, this piece was completed using an HB 3 Dixon Ticonderoga wood pencil, a PaperMate White Pearl latex free eraser, on Strathmore fine tooth surface 9in. x 12in. sketch paper.

So, until next time, enjoy your Valentine's Day weekend (and your President's Day if you're in the states and celebrating this Monday).