The Art Restoration Project

Whilst off ill this week, I took the opportunity to tidy up a box file of art I have and found a few interesting pieces I'd forgotten. Although I'm dabbling with a clean line style, I found some doodles from a few years back also done in this style. I have no idea what they were done for but with a little tweak here and there, I thought I could save them and transform them into pieces I could bear to look at. So, after some scanning of art patches and usage of Photoshop, here's the pieces I managed to retrieve yesterday:

From the top, these three were done as experiments. The first two just needed new heads to save them (I like the far left one best but it was hard to get decent detail on the faces at the size drawn) but the far right (originally done as Suzy from the Jock on a doodle page with other Jock stuff) needed just the face redoing and the hair filling out slightly...

Of the Supergirls, only the flat colouring was done (replacing more elaborate efforts in the past) but the fast was quite a patch job. Originally done as part of a commission featuring a whole family, I still had a scan of the original line art, as well as a photocopy. I drew new arms to replace ones cut out (as they interacted with other family members), layered them in via Pshop and slightly reduced the size of the head (as it was a slight caricature). Not a bad save, I think...

I'd always fancied redesigned the Flamebird costume (introduced as the post-Crisis version of the 50s bat-Girl) and her reappearance in new togs in Batwoman #3 reminded me of that. I always hated flame designs on clothes but liked how JH Williams III added ruffles of cloth to emulate flame. I came across an4 scan of a Batwoman pic done a few years ago and intended to lightbox but there's something about it that bugs me that I just can't specify so this Flamebird is actually a whole new drawing based on the original. It's a slightly streamlined version of the current outfit, extending the tunic tails into the same skirt as the Flamebird costume and adding Bat-Girlesque scalloping to the cape...

I lightboxed a Power Girl that I used to like but now slightly bugged me. Keeping to a clear line this time, I lowered her left (our right) shoulder and added a whole new cape: now I'm pretty happy with this (though the hair bugs me a bit...)

I quite liked the line art to this Mucha piece but hated the original coloured version. I removed some elements of the background that spoiled the whole thing for me (though I have made another alternate version whilst working on this that keeps certain elements, mirroring them to make a squarish backdrop rather than the more pleasing circular one) and flat-coloured the figure. Like the Power Girl, slight edits but ones that really help this sing for me...

Less of a save and more of a second attempt. Annoyed at how shite the first attempt at Katy Perry went (again, don't ask), I did a really quick drawing using different reference. I was intending to shade this and scan it in, but I really liked the simple line work so scanned it in as is, shaded/coloured it via Pshop and ta-dah, a whole better than KPMk I...

As mentioned previously, this is a reinked version of an earlier pic of Amy Pond that I mostly liked, except for the brush inking (lightboxing your own finished art feels like a weird thing to do for some reason...)

Finally, just another flat recolouring of an older drawing, this Rogue isn't perfect but is one of my favourite pieces of line work...