And what could be a more fun way of depicting Bronze Age Wonder Woman than in a Lynda Carter inspired Wonder Spin?  Another way that I like to depict Wonder Woman, is smiling.  I like the idea of a Wonder Woman who loves life and enjoys what she does.  My ideal Wonder Woman is happy.

This artcard and all the other artcards I’ve done are all original hand-made works and can be purchased or $15 plus shipping ($4.95 USPS Priority Shipping – international shipping will be calculated upon an individual order).

4.25 x 5.5 inches cardstock.

Pencil, ink, Prismacolor pencil, Prismacolor marker.

Wonder Woman ©DC Comics 2010

Artemis has proven to be a popular character in the Wonder Woman franchise.  She’s more headstrong and less compassionate than Diana, but her heart is in the right place.  She ended up becoming the leader of the Bana Mighdall Amazons on Themiscyra.  Aretmis has just returned to Themiscyra in the Wonder Woman title, and her future roll remains to be seen.

For this piece, I went back to Ed Benes’ original drawings of Artemis in the Requiem miniseries, as well as Nicola Scott’s take on the costume in the recent Secret Six storyline.  In some of Benes’ early drawings, he had the green lining at the decolletage make a “w” shape.  I like that element to help visually tie Artemis into the Wonder Woman family, and as a former Wonder Woman, I believe she’s entitled to wear a “w” symbol – even a simplified one.  I left of the skull on her headband because I thought that element was excessively 90′s.  Instead, I opted to repeat the tripple-arrow “A” symbol that the Requiem costume has on the sternum area.  I really liked the seams and the side-lacing that Nicola Scott added to the costume in the Secret Six issues, as well as the kneecap armor she gave the boots.  The sword is the special demon killer sword that Artemis ended up having in the Byrne run of Wonder Woman that was also included as an accessory to the Artemis action figure that DC Direct made.

This artcard has been sold, but all the other artcards I’ve done are all original hand-made works and can be purchased or $15 plus shipping ($4.95 USPS Priority Shipping – international shipping will be calculated upon an individual order).

4.25 x 5.5 inches cardstock.

Pencil, ink,  and Prismacolor pencil.

Artemis ©DC Comics 2010

I wanted to do a picture of Wonder Woman being happy and having fun – something that I don’t think happens nearly enough in the comic books.  I also really wanted to draw She-Ra and Catra, as well as Wonder Woman’s enemy, Cheetah.  Most pictures I’ve seen that have Wonder Woman and She-Ra together have them fighting each other.  I really don’t care for that, because I believe that Wonder Woman and She-Ra would get along really well and a tremendous sense of camaraderie, and I wanted to show them being friendly and having fun together.  I also wanted to play on the fact that they both have well-known enemies with a cat theme.

While I take a lot of my cues for Wonder Woman and Cheetah from the way that Terry Dodson depicted them when he drew the Wonder Woman comic book, I also take a couple of Lynda Carter elements that I sneak in here and there with Wonder Woman.  Cheetah also has a few George Perez elements in her design, especially when it comes to her facial markings, which Dodson mostly abandoned.

She-Ra and Catra were really fun to draw.  I’m a big fan of Mattel’s Masters of the Universe Classics action figure line.  It’s a melding of various canons of their franchises into one cohesive line.  My approach to She-Ra and Catra was along that lines.  I wanted to depict them with the familiarity of the Filmation designs of the cartoon that everyone knows and loves these characters from, but also bring in some of the details that the action figures had, whose designs were very different from the cartoon designs.  The result give detailed and interesting looks that easily stand up well alongside Wonder Woman and Cheetah.

The background is inspired by the Whispering Woods background paintings that were featured in the She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon.  They are lush, flamboyant and magical looking.  As I was planning out the background, I thought it would be fun to have Lookie in it.  Lookie was always hiding in the background of the cartoons, and at the end of the episodes, he would reveal his hiding place and explain the episode’s moral.  Once I decided that Lookie was going to be in it, I wanted to balance the picture, and tried to think of a character in Wonder Woman’s lore that could serve as an analogue to Lookie.  The two franchises are pretty rife with analogues:  Ares/Hordak, Circe/Shadow Weaver, Giganta/Scorpia, Steve Trevor/Bow, Nemesis/Sea Hawk.  When it came down to it, I settled on the whimsical and fun Wonder Tot, who is Wonder Woman as a small child in the Silver Age comic book stories.  Wonder Tot often had “impossible adventures” right alongside Wonder Woman as an adult and Wonder Woman as a teenager (Wonder Girl), and I thought that the magical nature of the Whispering Woods, and the fact that She-Ra’s planet of Etheria was likely in another dimension, would provide a narrative that would allow Wonder Tot.

Here, Kitty, Kitty!
8.5″ x 11″ on Bristol Board
Pencils, Inks and Prismacolor Color Pencils

Wonder Woman, Cheetah and Wonder Tot ©DC Comics 2010

She-Ra, Catra and Lookie ©Mattel 2010

Wonder Woman & Power Girl for Marla Bea Benefit

8.75″ x 12″ on Bristol Board
Ray Caspio:  Pencils
Kevenn T. Smith:  Inks, Prismacolor Color Pencils, and Prismacolor Markers

Wonder Woman and Power Girl ©DC Comics 2010

This one, based on the ABC TV series starring Lynda Carter, has Private Etta Candy (played by Beatrice Colen) and Yeoman Diana Prince (Lynda Carter, of course), who we wanted to make sure were represented in the auction this year.

Etta Figures it Out?
8.5″ x 11″ on Bristol Board
Ray Caspio:  Pencils
Kevenn T. Smith:  Inks and Colors (Prismacolor)

Wonder Woman, Diana Prince and Etta Candy ©DC Comics 2009

Superman:

Wonder Woman:

Donna Troy as Wonder Girl:

Supergirl (I wanted to capture the feeling of the aerial ballet in the Supergirl movie starring Helen Slater.):

Green Lantern:

Batgirl:

Nightwing:

Flamebird (based on International Supermodel and D-Listed.com’s Hot Slut of the Year 2007, Phoebe Price):

This piece, entitled “Wonder Clubbing,” is one that I did for the silent auction for Wonder Woman Day III to benefit two domestic violence shelters and a women’s crisis line.  I wanted to do a piece that showed Wonder Woman and her closest friends having fun and enjoying themselves, so I depicted them dancing at a club with a couple of admirers.  One of my goals for this piece was to also include characters close to the hearts of Wonder Woman comic book fans like Artemis, Etta Candy, Donna Troy, and in a way, Circe.

Wonder Woman, Donna Troy, Etta Candy, Artemis, and Circe ©DC Comics 2009

Ray Caspio then used the costume elements that I came up with and transposed them onto his piece, creating what is now the program cover and image used by NOW to promote the conference, where the theme is “No Capes, No Masks, No Boundaries: Super-Women Unite!”

Image courtesy of Ray Caspio ©2008