Hawks

A few months back I started drawing members of the new Justice League of America. I knocked out a few quickly but have stepped away from them in recent months. After drawing a few pieces as gifts in December, and mostly concentrating on non-DC characters so far in '08, I decided it was time to revisit the JLA.

After drawing the big 3 (Supes, Bat and WW) as well as the chair person (Black Canary) and arguably the heart and soul of the team (Green Lantern) I decided I needed to go with one of the newbies. After much internal debate (OK, I lied not that much) I decided I wanted to draw Hawkgirl. Having never drawn Hawkgirl before I wanted to draw a dual piece of her and Hawkman. As much as I like Speedy... Arsenal... Red Arrow (what ever you want to call him) I've always thought Kendra (the best of the Hawkgirls) belongs with Carter. In my eyes I see them as the Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood of the DC Universe.

Hawkgirl doesnt have a very rich art history. She hasnt been featured in a lot of mainstream books until now. In my opinion here are some of the best Kendra Saunders artists... Joe Bennett, Greg Land, Howard Chaykin, Steve Sadowski, and my personal favorite Ed Benes. I used a piece by the great Greg Land as my inspiration.


The piece took me a little less than an hour to do. As most of the details would be added in the inking and shading the pencilling was pretty quick. I inked this over a series of days. What with having a very stressful week at work I found it very cathartic to ink a little each night. I finally finished inking the piece yesterday afternoon. I would guess that total inking time was about two and a half hours. I had decided while doing the pencils that I really wanted to not heavily ink everything, so I would have to go back in with my handy No. 3 Hard pencil and add in lots of depth and shading. Simply put, I am in love with this piece. I think the characters look strong, I love the angle, and the combination of blacks and grays is amongst the strongest I've ever put together.