Batman-uary 2025 - Jungle Batman (Part 2)

BATMAN-UARY 2025:
Jungle Batman (Part 2)

Just under the wire, it's Batman-uary: Jungle Batman: Part II.  I had this idea halfway through doing the last post with Jungle Batman and it amused me (not that it takes much to amuse me, of course).

There was an all too brief fad of drawing male characters in the pose of various female poses on covers and pin-ups with predictably ridiculous (and amusing) results.  So, continuing that tradition... here it is!

I will admit that I cheated a little bit on this one, as I had done a GIANT (20" x 30") recreation of the "Sheena: Queen of the Jungle" cover for a friend, so I already had some pencils of the cover I could digitally ink over in Clip Studio Paint.

Once again, here is the original cover to "Batman #72" (1952) with Jungle Batman.

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It was done as a parody/homage of Dave Steven's "Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #1" (1985).

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STEP ONE:  Here are the scrawled, digital pencils done on a 2,000px x 3,000px canvas @ 300dpi.  I quickly scrawled over my pencils for the recreation of the cover I did earlier for Dave Stevens' "Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #1" (1985).

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STEP TWO:  And here are the digital inks, mostly done with a 10pt brush.  Luckily, I was able to save a few steps by just inking over my pencils/inks from the cover recreation.

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STEP THREE: Here is the finished digital work, done using a series of layers for each color, and a very slight paper texture over top.

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint.

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Sheena - Queen of the Jungle

Sheena - Queen of the Jungle

Hey, it's been a while!  A cross between being super-busy with non-art-related things, and just feeling that minor existential crisis of not knowing what to do next mixed with everything I was working on just felt like it wasn't going anywhere.  So, lots and lots of projects started and abandoned (some of which I will probably pick up again).  Of course, not being able to get anything finished also added to that feeling of just not knowing what to do next.  Ugh...  Heisenberg would be proud that I was simultaneously busy as heck and getting nothing done at the same time!

But, one foot in front of the other, it's time to get back in that saddle again, sally forth, and all that other B.S.

This time it is a commission of sorts for Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

One of the mildly amusing things about this drawing is that while I didn't have a photo reference, by the end it looked a heck of a lot like one of the regular models we used at the Figure Drawing Sessions I used to run before COVID (alas, she moved to another state and we are still waiting to see when/if we will have Figure Drawing again).

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Done with Colored Pencil on 8-1/2" x 11" toned cardstock.

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Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #1 - Cover Replica

Sheena: Queen of the Jungle #1

Here's the original cover by Dave Stevens.

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And here's my Cover Replica of the Sheena: Queen of the Jungle cover.  (The coloration is a bit washed out in the picture, but given the size of the cover replicas, they are always a bit tricky to photograph.)

Well, I **FINALLY** finished another GIANT cover re-creation for my pal, Jim, from Jimmy Jams Comics and Games here in Winona, MN.  It is yet another painting which took far too long to finish.  The weird thing is it took longer to finish the Sheena cover than the Brian Bolland "Killing Joke" cover I did, which seems to be far more involved than this one.  Sigh...

As usual, here are the Step-By-Step's for those interested... :-)

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STEP ONE:  I glued a sheet of (140#) Stonehenge paper to a 20" x 30" (that's 50.8cm x 76.2cm to those of you who use the Metric System) piece of hard board/medium density fiberboard using matte medium.  Then I used a mixture of gesso and matte medium to serve as a ground for the painting.  I ruled out a 1" grid and then used a blue pencil to draw out the picture.

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STEP TWO:  I began to fill in some of the general flat colors using acrylic paint.  Then I thought I should go ahead and use a drybrush technique right away for the shading on Sheena.  I masked off the area around her back and legs with some low-tack tape that wouldn't stick to the painting too much, to try and minimize the amount of drybrushed paint from over-running the background and build up too much.  Later, it turned out that drybrush technique didn't work out quite as well as I wanted and was very difficult to color-match for any mistakes/changes made... 

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STEP THREE:  Here are most of the background colors and tree/vine work.

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STEP FOUR:  And here it is a little further along...

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STEP FIVE:  I painted over the drybrush effects on Sheena from earlier, as it was just becoming too much of a problem trying to match everything whenever I would goof up some line or shaded region (it happens, unfortunately).  So, instead I used thin layers of acrylic paint mixed with acrylic mediums to blend the colors, instead.  It seemed to work out well enough.  I used the same effect for the color blending on the log she is standing on.

Once the underpainting was done, I went over top with the linework using black acrylic paint thinned down with water and blending medium.  I used Krylon Matte Finish as a fixative, as well as a separate UV-protecting finish, and called it **DONE**!

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This was done with acrylic paint on 20" x 30" gessoed Stonehenge paper glued to hardboard.

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