Defunct VALKYRIE WYLDE illo

Now that I'm finished with the well-behind-schedule EMPOWERED vol. 4 (now due out Oct. 22nd, apparently, rather than Sept. 12), I'm wrapping up all kinds of miscellanea that wound up being delayed by this most recent State of Deadline Emergency.

Among said miscellanea are a handful of old commissions, from the San Diego before last (or thereabouts), including this request for an illo of "Valkyrie Wylde," dating from an old April Fool's joke played by the videogame magazine PSM. In short, PSM featured a faux news piece about an upcoming "nude raider" game starring a nekkid Lara-Crofty action heroine; to accompany the article, they worked up some faked screenshots, and I drew a few images of "Val"... Hence this commission request.

Anyhoo, initially I seized on the brilliant idea to draw an 11" X 17" piece to be rendered with Sharpies, in order to conserve my precious but dwindling supply of 3B Mars-Lumograph pencil leads. Alas, I soon realized that the piece was too large to be rendered with Sharpie Extra Fines (I'd never worked on a Sharpied piece at this scale), and the bigger Sharpie Fine markers do not lend themselves well to this sort of image (that is, an image lacking high contrast and bold use of black ink)...

So, I pulled the plug on the piece, and will shortly follow up this failed commission with a more conventional, pencil-rendered illo. Still, to add to my ever-burgeoning Scraps pile, I decided to scan and upload the incomplete image. Note that I had to Level Adjust the HELL outta the image to make the very light pencil roughs visible...

Side note: The ongoing trope of "wielding two guns" bores the hell outta me... Yeah, it was kinda interesting and debatably badasstastic back when John Woo was first showing it TWENTY FRICKIN' YEARS AGO, but the novelty of this dubious move has worn off considerably in the decades since. Thus, I decided to revert to a "braced pair of pistols" pose for which I'd long ago shot photoref; this stance is still complete and utter BS, but at least it's a bit more novel than the conventional "two-fisted gunplay" pose.

Unfortunately, I forgot that I'd previously used that very same photoref to depict ANOTHER clothing-challenged redhead blazing away with braced Ruger P-89s: namely, Caitlin Fairchild in the GEN 13 BOOTLEG miniseries, GRUNGE: THE MOVIE! Repeat oneself much? Oh, well.

BTW, I should also note that I'm not taking on any more commissions for the foreseeable future, as I'm currently swamped with work aplenty. Hell, I gotta work up the EMPOWERED vol. 5 cover and solicitation copy in the next few weeks...