WORK STAGES: Another shockingly difficult pin-up, pt.1! (Patreon)

I'm more than a tad dubious about posting DC or Marvel stuff here, so keep this to yourselves, okay?

Anyhoo, following up on a previous Harley Quinn variant cover, this time around I tried a fantasy-RPG-oriented cover concept, which of course would be more relevant to future work such as The Last Party (aka the new comic project that merges characters from Hushed Half-Elf and Party of Two).

So, I worked up a rough in Clip Studio Paint via the ol' Wacom Cintiq: 

Harley's figure looked more than a tad misproportioned and stumpy, so I tweaked it in Photoshop a bit:

..and, temporarily, thought the result was an adequate improvement. I sent the rough off to my editor, got approval on the image, and started the theoretically final pencils for the cover—in analog media, you'll notice, using Wildstorm/DC art board acquired during my Gen13 run 22 years ago (ouch):

...only to belatedly notice that Harley's figure was still misproportioned and stumpy. I scanned the piece, and once again did a whole bunch of rescaling and tweaking to her image in Photoshop:

The results were still more than a tad wonky, but not quite so eye-gouging to me, so I rolled with this revision. Teeth gritted, I erased her figure from the original art board, traced the image via printout and lightboard, and proceeded to the really-final-this-time pencils:

...which, as I type this text at 7:30am, I am about to continue inking for the second straight day; I spent all of yesterday inking g-d thorns, and haven't yet touched a PITT Artist Pen to even one of the illo's figures. 

Yes, folks, this new cover has turned out to be just as difficult, frustrating and time-consuming—in fact, more time-consuming—than the g-d cyberpunk-y "hardsuit Harley" after all. Golly! 

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Ehh, 'tis time to start getting either my Life Drawing (for all Patron tiers) or Distressed Damsels (for the $5+ tiers) mandatory posts for the month outta the way, so you can expect to see one of those on Friday.