This is a commissioned typography portrait for a friend who has gone gaga over Darna, the most popular Filipino comic superheroine.
For this project, being not an enthusiast in drawing cartoons or comic illustrations, I had the work of Gilbert Monsanto as my reference. And for better quality, I processed these images on Photoshop prior to upload having used my 5MP camera phone for these shots.
Sketching was practically easy given the reference I had, but words to describe the superheroine was a struggle. This prompted me to dig further about the superheroine; a combination of her story on comic books, movies, TV series, and even related songs!
I inked it using a red DONG-A HEXAPLUS Fineliner as per my client's request to use red instead of my usual black fine markers.
I was challenged in putting words on the hair because of the curls but I wanted it to look suave and make it flow like the shape of the hair, hence the outcome.
I added song lyrics from the song "Narda" by Kamikazee and the popular line from the many Darna films: "Ding, ang bato".
As per client's request again, I added color to the head dress/armor using yellow and orange Faber Castell Colored Pencils. And it worked! Defying my conventional way of doing typography portraits! :D
And here's the final artwork.
Darna: Red and Beyond
Fineliner and Colored Pencils on Master Board
