Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This is a fun one this week; well, fun for me at least! It's a turnaround but also a character sheet for me. It's Cleopatra, but a very comic book Cleopatra.

As I've done research and preparatory sketches for an upcoming Egypt project, I've definitely tried to stay as close to history as possible. I'd like that project to have a decent amount of accuracy and consistency with the historical record. These upcoming sample pages however are a chance to cut loose a bit more. Here I can pull in some actual Egyptian design and costuming but also pull things from places like the Egyptian Revival movement (itself a subset of Art Deco) and comic books (I know, big surprise there, right?).

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Okay, here we go: This is Cleopatra. She's somewhere between an Egyptian Pharaoh, Jack Kirby's Big Barda and Elizabeth Taylor. Costume's possibly too busy. What do you think?