Ninjak, Armorines, and Kris Hathaway

This year, the Valiant group on Facebook has been holding a weekly art competition. It took me awhile to get around to competing, but three weeks ago I finally got started. The first week we were given a theme: The Fist and the Steel. This was the title of a recent four-part story in Ninjak. This is the recent series written by Matt Kindt. Ninjak is Colin King, a British mercenary who often works with MI-6. I drew a picture of the four major characters in the story sitting down and playing poker to achieve their goals, rather than fighting for it. It was fun, and interesting to draw all four characters. Of course, we'd all rather see them fight, right? Isn't that the fun of comic books?

The following week's theme was Space. I had just read X-O Manowar Issue 25, from the classic 1990s series. This issue contained an inserted edition of Armorines Issue 0. The two formed a complete story about a group of American soldiers recruited by the military to form an elite fighting unit. They wore armor specially designed by a brilliant scientist, and their first mission was to attack Aric of Dacia, and capture his X-O armor. Once the higher-ups realize that these orders were faked, the Armorines are recalled. But not before a spectacular fight in which we see the potential of the Armorines' armor.

This week we were not given a theme. So I chose to do a portrait of one of the characters from the recent Harbinger books, written by Joshua Dysart. This character was Kris Hathaway. As the former girlfriend of team-leader Peter Stanchek, the evil Toyo Harada's people follow her, and continually read her mind to discover clues to Peter's whereabouts. So she reluctantly joins the Harbingers and goes on the run from Harada's people, but only after she uses Peter's abilities to rob a bank in order to pay off her parents crippling debt, and save them from bankruptcy, due to her father's medical bills.

It's my first attempt a portrait. I based it on several drawings in two issues of Harbinger by two different pencilers. It got a few Likes on Facebook, and even a compliment on the hair texture. I'm reasonably pleased with the result. It'll be interesting to see how the process of making a portrait from a photo differs from one based on a comic book drawing, when I get that far.