The Black Widow

"From Russia With Love"

Another 11x14 Black Widow piece. Much like my earlier one, I'm playing up the James Bond/Russian spy aspect a bit here, though in a less overtly sexual way. Even though she's almost certainly showing off more breastage. Hey, when I'm asked to do sexy, I know what they mean. Hey, at least the gun isn't phallic this time around.

ANYWAY, I composed this with Art Nouveau even more firmly in mind than usual, as I was finishing up a book on A.N. typography (I know, right?). So I guess think not only the Russian spy angle, but also kind of an art nouveau travel poster. Before inking I did pull back away from the nouveau thing a bit, removing extra borders and outlines, for example. I did however, keep a very simple inking style, primarily outlines in a couple of different brush widths, and applied most of the details at the marker stage. It makes it somewhat more like a painting, and is a technique I'm also using in a full-color piece I'm working on.

And though I am a pacifist, I love drawing guns. Just pulling out the triangle and t-square is such a different experience to freehand drawing, and working on all of the proportions is just fun. I also made the Uzi and Browning slightly larger than they actually are, as I like the idea of Natasha being kind of short, even though I gave her legs a mile long. Actually, I wasn't going to even put guns in this one initially, but looking at all of the soft curves on both Natasha and the background, I felt the art needed more hard edges beyond the borders of the bg image.

Speaking of, the background image is the Kremlin, though I did move a couple of buildings around to fit the composition, and purposefully used lighter "washed out" colors, as to better pop Natasha. I almost added a shadow behind her, but decided that would probably be overdoing it.

Greyscale copic markers, black and white prismacolor pencil, white ink on 11x14 vellum bristol board