Jenny's Past: A Work in Progress

I am working on a scene from Jenny's past, prior to Border Worlds, when she was a college student on earth, and when she earned money as an artist's model for drawing classes (you didn't know that, did you? I didn't either). The scene began as a tiny page thumbnail in my sketchbook, and I have been working it out at a larger size with tracing paper. In this case I am not working from a script, and am learning about the character as I explore this period in her life. More to come.

This is the original thumbnail sketch, about 3 inches wide, made within the last year.

Here are some separate explorations in blue, graphite, and Uni-Ball, wherein I am attempting to find the right age, expression, and attitude of the character. In this scene, Jenny is supposed to be in her early 20s, whereas in the Border Worlds series she was in her late twenties. Not much of a difference, but significant. The top left head has the right balance of youth and inexperience; the bottom right she is a bit too old. I want to get the sense that she is young but tired from all her activities and burning the candle from both ends (she is also on an athletic scholarship).

This the development of that thumbnail, blown up to about 11 inches wide, and elaborated in blue and graphite pencil on canary yellow tracing paper, the kind once prevalent in the drafting industry, but which I have gravitated to for some reason.

Here is the second part.

As an artist's model in college, Jenny takes a break from a pose and puts on her robe.

Again a scene from college. An athlete, Jenny returns from practice, and has an issue with a dorm neighbor who seems a little too preoccupied with recording Jenny for a documentary.

More to follow!

"Appropriating" Stephen D. Sullivan: Anatomy of a Swipe!

Here is a Uni-Ball sketch I made on canary yellow tracing paper from a print out of a figure from the cover of Steve Sullivan's Zombie Shark. The author and illustrator uses part of the image on his Google profile, and I fell in love with the pose (or "gesture," as they say in fine arts, or "motive" if you are Sir Kenneth Clark). In any event, it suggested a pose for Jenny Woodlore, so I traced a print out, and this is what I got. I'm going to blow it up again and trace it some more, something like what I imagine to have been Gil Kane's method of developing figure drawings, until I have something that will almost be original! If all goes according to plan, Steve will never find out...!

Sketch, approximately 8 1/2" x 11".

Sketch next to black and white printout; actual detail.

I must say that usually when I swipe (or "study," as I prefer to say), I simply copy the figure, that is to say, I just look at the original and eyeball it, drawing it freehand on paper, with the print or online source in view. Most such studies remain in my sketchbook, although some can lend themselves to repurposing. I never used to swipe in my early comics, if only because when I copied a photographic source of some sort it always stuck out like a sore thumb. Now I am able to make changes as I did here (reducing the bust and augmenting her calcaneus (heel bone). Tracing usually doesn't yield very useful results, and in this case she is a bit too "butty" in the way her torso is twisted, that I may address if I develop this further.

Jenny Takes a Break: A Work in Progress II

Jenny steps down from the model platform in this refined development on canary yellow paper.

See Jenny's Past: A Work in Progress

Freefall II: The Contraptoid

This is the rough tissue and final art for a page relating to others I have posted.

Freefall: Sketches and Art for a Post-Marooned Jenny Sequence

At the end of Border Worlds: Marooned (1990), Jenny Woodlore had made her way by jetpack to the penthouse abode of Dr. Oliver Beecher, only to find Sparky the robot with the message that the good doctor had already evacuated Chrysalis, the domed city. A scene was subsequently sketched out and partially finished realized as finished artwork in the 1990s, reconstructed her from extant materials. In it, Sparky plays a recording made by Beecher for Jenny on a Contraptoid-like robot, informing her that the space station is on a collision course with a neighboring planet. 

Jenny, already exhausted from her climb out of the bowels of the space station, and devastated by the arrest of Drasin and Cody and the loss of the hotrod, straps her jetpack back on to leave the penthouse. Her depleted fuel supply is used up before she can land in the park below, and she freefalls through the trees, protected only by her space suit. Crashing to the ground, she is assisted by onlookers, and staggers to her feet only to collapse again in a fountain. After she revives, she makes her way to a tramway that takes her back to the hangar on the outskirts of the plate of the space station. Removing her space suit, she collapses in tears in the shower, and finally passes out, nude, on her bed. The conclusion of this sequence marks the approximate halfway point of the story material planned for Border Worlds.

Below are several sheets of chisel-point marker sketches from the same sketchbook. The appearance of the Meddler and Rory Smash on one of them date these to around the time I was working on Bizarre Heroes, and particular the final issue (#0), when I was contemplating a time-travel crossover.