Heroes' Daphne Artwork

For those who may not know me all that well, over the past few months, I’ve become a big fan of actress Brea Grant (seen below looking adorable):

I’ve become a fan not just because of her work on Heroes and Friday Night Lights, though she’s amazing on both of those shows, but also because she has a wonderful blog that I check out whenever I’m bored at work. She’s a big geek. She reads comic books. She watches sci-fi tv shows. She’s incredibly accessible for her fans and very down-to-earth. She’s an actress you can really root for to succeed.

I had wanted to draw or paint a picture of Brea’s character from Heroes, Daphne, for a while, but I’d been busy and I also didn’t have any great ideas for the composition. I really wanted it to be something awesome. Then last week I started working on a birthday present for a friend of mine. I drew a portrait of her 5-month old son:

 

Yes, he does have that much hair. I actually “cut” it in the illustration because it was just looked too ridiculous otherwise. Before I started playing with his hair, it looked like something out of that faux-commercial from SNL for Baby Trump Wigs. Even with all that hair, he’s still one of the cutest babies I have ever seen. I finished the illustration and I was really happy with it. And once I get my artistic mojo going, it’s hard to stop it. So, of course, that is when the idea finally hit me for the Daphne drawing. This is by far the geekiest piece of art I have ever created and if you’ve seen my portfolio, that is saying a lot.  Here it is:

 

My first idea was to do Daphne, with trademark smirk across her face, running away from Hiro’s outstretched hand. I had had that image in my head for a long time (at least a month or two). It could’ve been cute, but it didn’t blow me away. Then this idea hit me. I couldn’t tell you when, it’s all sort of a blur (pardon the pun), but once the idea of the three speedsters racing appeared in my mind, I knew that’s what I was going to draw. I was super-psyched, and once I found all my reference, it took me about 4 hours to knock it out.

Initially, I thought about painting it. Sort of a rainbow of speedsters, going from Quicksilver in blue to Daphne in purple to The Flash in red. But I was so happy with the baby’s portrait I had just finished, I decided to stick with graphite for this one too. I think Brea’s likeness is just a little off. Her face is all of an inch and a half by an inch on the paper, so it’s tough to get all the details perfect when you’re drawing something in such a small area. I almost feel like doing a full-sized portrait just to prove to myself I can get it right. But overall, I’m happy with the final result. I love the composition as a whole.

I don’t have a title for it yet. Suggestions are welcome. I could go with something obvious like “Battle of the Speedsters” or  “Race of the Speedsters.” I also like the idea of a caption, perhaps “The speed force is totally overrated” or “… and I’m running in HEELS!”

–Erik

Note: I’ll probably post a link to a larger version of the drawing later. The picture above was taken with my digital camera. I think it will look a bit better when I import it using the scanner. Here’s a larger version: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=79006421&albumID=1059614&imageID=40386035

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