About the Pinups #7: Pinup #14

In this series of articles I tell the individual stories of the numerous Bianca and the Satanic Witches Pinups - mainly of my favourites, or in some other way important ones.

This is about the fourteenth pinup in the series.

At this point I started incorporating more photographic elements for some reason. I have never been much of a camera user, but I know somewhat the basics. I guess I wanted to blend my rather crude and weird style with more smooth and somehow realistic vibes.

I started painting the background. I did it basically the same way as Pinup #5: I did the main work with water colours and then added some colour pencils for fine detail.

The image is a portrait of Mascha, our evil hench woman character. In the corresponding issue she meets with her mysterious boss who glows blue. So I wanted to add these glowing lights to her unsure, kind of scared looking face.

It happened to be winter when I did this, and it gets really dark in here during winters. So I walked around my then neighbourhood snapping pictures of all the yard lights and street lights I came across. I had deliberately put my camera on the slowest possible shutter speed and then I waved it around, or walked around with it while it was taking the picture.

This created these weird photographs of lights that seem to be "going" somewhere. It's the same principle as in if you have seen those photos of city streets during a night, where the object seems clear and well lit, but the cars in the background seem like streaks of light.

I put these on top of Mascha's face. They were easy to manipulate since the background is already really dark. All I needed to do was play with the blending modes, maybe add some contrast and tint the colours more blue.

I am really happy with this image in all of it's simplicity. I hope you like(d) it as well.