About the Pinups #16: Pinups 32 & 35

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 thirty second and the thirty fifth pinup in the series.

I put these two together because technically there isn't very much to say about them but I still wanted to highlight them a little - mainly because I'm pretty happy with them, especially #35.

These two pinups have in common also that they have taken influence from an earlier artistic source. Bianca and the Satanic Witches #32 was about the calm before the storm: our heroes don't quite know yet what's in store for them. So I wanted to do something kinda beautiful but something that also reflects what our characters are all about.

I have always loved art nouveau -art and especially Alphonse Mucha. One reason is because I could never do the things he used to do in his graphic designs. The clarity but yet the intricacy of the whole thing, all the detail and the simple, beautiful shapes. Looking at those pictures really humbles me in a fundamental level. So for #35 I tried to take his influence and create something that he might have done if he had known Bianca and the Satanic Witches.

I started by dividing the background plate into various shapes. I wanted it to be of a more elongated shape like some of Mucha's posters and what not were. This would also allow to use a lot of negative space on the final, regular paper shaped pinup.

When I painted the background I maybe went a little bit lazy: I should have designed something that fitted the line art grid a little bit better. I just could not think what that would be so I created this colourful mess for the background.

The only thing I added to that was the fire on the bottom.

The characters I drew, inked and painted like I normally would. Nothing really special here.

Then I just put the whole thing together. I'm not so sure it looks anything like Mucha - certainly not nowhere near as good. I'm not even sure you can see his influence in it. But somehow I still kinda like it - atleast it's somewhat different to what I would just naturally do. The composition works, although maybe the forefront characters should have been thought through a little bit better so they wouldn't obscure the background quite so much.

Bianca and the Satanic Witches #35 ends on a very exiting note of our witches getting ready for battle. This brought to my mind the old soviet propaganda posters from World War II era. They are a complete opposite of Alphonse Mucha - and maybe in that way closer to my overall, natural style. What attracts me to them though is their boldness of colour - usually they had just one or two and then a very bright red that really jumps out at you.

So I started drawing the characters. You can see that I have made the witches almost like statues - this is very true to many of the old propaganda images. There is one in particular that has almost the exact same kind of composition as this image has. I added Bianca to the background since the witches' mission is to look for and rescue her.

Then I painted just two colours: one grayish blue for the foreground (almost like the stone in a statue) and one yellow to simulate old paper and work as a texture. You can see from the finished art work that I changed the yellow quite a lot in photoshop.

I also drew Bianca's hair as a separate element. This was to make it really pop: to use the purple of her hair like red is always on those propaganda posters. The one thing that immediately jumps out at you. I used this drawn shape, turned it purple and mixed it, only a little bit, so the background yellow has a little shine through it. Otherwise it would have looked almost obnoxious and seemed like a separate element.

This I like very much and I think the influence is clearly detectable. It has a serious vibe like something tough is really going to go down and our girls are ready for it.