Back in 2019 I contributed artwork to the Bettie Page trading card set. This set was produced by Dynamite Entertainment, which is best known as a comic book publisher. Some of their comics you may have read are Vampirella and Red Sonja, both of which had trading card sets I also worked on!
Bettie Page was one of the most famous and original pinup girls, rising to fame in the 1950s era. A cultural icon who has continued to garner fans and produce new works about her. The NYT obituary said this about her:
In her trademark raven bangs, spike heels and killer curves, Ms. Page was the most famous pinup girl of the post-World War II era, a centerfold on a million locker doors and garage walls. She was also a major influence in the fashion industry and a target of Senator Estes Kefauver’s anti-pornography investigators.
For artists like myself her ‘girl next door’ type face is very fun to draw. She has equal parts warmth and fierceness though, making her extremely dynamic. I hope that a little bit of that was conveyed in my tiny little drawings!
The artwork
I contributed 50 different drawings to this project, which is quite a bit more than I usually do! Most of the drawings are of close up portraits, showing just her face. There are a few full or bust drawings of Bettie that I drew, but I decided to not draw backgrounds to save time (I’m not as fast as some artists so I’d rather spend my limited time drawing the figure or portrait).
For art materials, I used a pentel pocket brush pen, a felt pen, copic markers, and pencil crayons for creating these drawings. The pentel pocket brush pens are great for creating lines of varying widths, especially super fine lines that look great for inking hair. These pens also have replaceable tubes of ink, so they’re fairly inexpensive.
For a few of the cards, like the one below, I drew only the face and had the hair become a negative image. Just recently these types of drawings have become super popular as comic covers. I’m thinking I should do some more artwork like this since people are getting really into it. Plus, these were a few of my favourite drawings!
