Kadessa

Inspired by a combination of things: primarily from a conversation about superheroes/villains and as a means to cheer up a friend. After taking a 3 month long break from drawing, I found myself at a loss for subject matter. I had items I wanted to draw; however, those subjects carried with them a clear-cut vision of what I wanted. When that happens I don’t feel like I can adequately represent my vision with my drawing talent (or lack of) when I’m not drawing everyday and in the middle of a flow of creativity/inspiration—when instincts just lead the pencil in the right direction to make things look correct. In other words: I was rusty, and I needed to do something about it.

The solution was simple enough: draw a subject with ambiguous objectives and develop the concept as I draw it; hence Kadessa with her lightning whip. On the original I screwed up royally and kicked myself later on for not fixing it even though I caught it well in advanced—I wanted it centered on the page. After setting down preliminary line work I discovered her hands came just shy of the top of the page, and I had a full two inches between the shadow of her boot and the bottom of the page. The electronic representation has been more aesthetically cropped, but on the original I can’t answer why I didn’t fix it when I had the chance. I was lazy and now it bugs me.

Initially I just drew Kadessa stretching, but ultimately felt a counter-arch was needed to balance out the curves of her body. Which sparked the idea of the lightning whip (don’t ask), and the lightning whip just did not feel right unless I had an additional strand of electricity—a fading ‘flash’ if you will.

I was happy with the shading of her outfit and little subtle details like the zipper on her boot, the tie-string on the back of her top, and the folds in the leather. Also I was happy with the shading of the background and how it lightens up around her form and around the lightning—in truth it’s just a cheap fix for what would otherwise be negative space, but it’s something. And it might create the illusion of a serious work of art to the untrained eye.

On the flip side, though, I wish I had used a bit more restraint on the background shading so that there was no visible direction to the pencil strokes. That and her arms don’t quite look right to me ... the shading is okay, but their rotation isn’t quite right. However, considering I didn’t have a sexy girl in leather with a whip posing for me, I think I did okay. It served its purpose to cheer someone up. So everyone’s happy.