Win with Science

One thing I'm glad I was able to do was to finish the February challenge with a piece I'd been wanting to do for more than a month. I had seen a couple of images in a photo post on a friend's Tumblr which connected Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) with Sailor Mercury, who both shared a very scientific attitude (and were blue, but that's a bonus). I really like the pair, and wanted to do a picture based on it. Eventually, I managed to work myself up to doing it, and opted to finish on a high point.

I enjoyed making this piece. I first did some research on how to draw the Blue Beetle armor, which really intimidated me, at first. This eased a little after I gathered some pictures and did some studies. I figured out how to approach the segmented aspect of the armor, the trickiest to me, and how his mask/helmet worked. Here's the rough.

You can see I marked the places where I would fill the blacks. Note, I did draw Mercury's visor, but did not ink it because I'd honestly forgot what that line was for. (I think I had thought it was my mark for the eye line. Simple mistake.)

Initial inks without the graphite sketch.

I think the inking came out very well. I only realized I'd forgotten the visor after I'd inked it and had uploaded the "final" inks. Easily fixed with a couple strokes of the pen. I then took the corrected image into Photoshop and applied a deliberately flat coloring. I eventually opted to have some yellow because it helped act as a contrast to all the blue, and allowed some more color from Beetle to show up.

I plan to do more of this with the other Inner Senshi/Scouts. I've got one I'm pretty sure about, but the other two throw me a little bit. Hopefully, I'll figure something out.