Catwoman - a study after Adam Hughes

Based on the original from [link] by Adam Hughes from the cover of his book, "Cover Run". This is done in Prismacolors on junk sketch paper... This version shows the progression from sketch, through the coloring stages, and the cleaned-up final in Photoshop.

This is different scans of the drawing in progress. The first version looked like Lucy Liu. Rework. Problem is, I bent the eyelashes DOWNWARD over the EYE (like a typical Asian eye) instead of UPWARD over the LID. I noticed in step 2 that the mouth and nose tip were too far down. Corrected that in step 3. I always take a long time in the sketch stages, so that the proportions are right. Why proceed when the basic under structure is flawed? As one artist said, continuing on with incorrect proportions is like planning to fail. As things get more into place around steps 3 and 4, I start sketching the highlights on the goggles and other costume details. At step 4 I felt fairly confident that the sketch was done, so I started inking from light to dark. Adam Hughes usually starts with the face first, so that if the face is wrong, he doesn't waste his time with the rest of the drawing. I did the reverse, because I was eager to get some darks down. This comes back to almost bite me in step 6.

In step 6, I used the wrong marker and made her brow bone too dark. I usually use 3 Prismacolor markers; black, cool grey 50% (which I call my "nuclear" marker because once you use it, there's no going back), and cool grey 20%. In confusion between calls, I accidentally used 50% nuclear on a place that only needed 20%. So now there's a big dark grey spot where it should be light grey. One Michael's store coupon later, I had a colorless blender. The colorless blender acted like a solvent-based eraser, helping me to remove the offending grey. Actually, the colorless blender worked like a charm, because I was able to rework the shape of the upper lip as late as step 11. Step 12 is the cleaned-up Photoshop version.

Incidentally, the progress image looks like a sheet of postage stamps...

This image is from "Cover Run", by Adam Hughes, and features Catwoman, none of which are mine. This is just a piece for practice, so I can learn from a master