This wasn’t exactly the best idea among those I’m keeping for when I have the time to do them, neither it was one of the quickest to do – so much it’s not really done by now – but circumstances have made it become the most appropriate for this weekend… Because of nothing less than… Halloween! And that was the only thing out of the ordinary I’ve done in a Halloween… for years :P (we’re not into Halloween very much here in Brazil :\).

Anyway, not only Halloween season made it adequate,  but also I think any other time would make it inadequate… because the illustration have this accidentally and uncomfortably necrophile look. It was accidental because all I wanted to do was another morbidily ironic drawing like so many others I’ve done… But it wasn’t the first one to pass the wrong message… So, children, don’t try to do at home anything you see in my drawings ;P (specially eating brains with hashis, it’s gonna be a mess and it’s not always possible to clean the evidences in time. The best way to eat brains actually is… something I would know if I did eat brains, but of course I don’t, obviously).

So, let’s get to the drawing. It’s a zombie pin-up. I’ve had the idea, and shortly after I found out that, unfortunately, it’s far from being new. There are millions of illustrations and t-shirt stamps with this subject, there are events, and whole sites about it … Usually when I notice an idea I’ve had wasn’t new, I throw it away, but I decided to go ahead with this one. For two reasons: first, to test new illustration techniques – more specifically digital techniques – and second… I realized my idea wasn’t so not original, so it wouldn’t hurt to do it…

Below is the paper version, made with the old pencil and the old eraser.

And below is the Illustrator finished version. I must admit it exceeded my expectations. It took me hours to do it, because I was using the program for the first time and I’m still very awkward with vectors (so much that I’ve done a lot of things with the Pencil tool, instead of the Pen tool… To, believe me, suffer less). There were moment when I stopped, looked, and thought “what a piece of crap”. But in the end I was getting the hang of it, and I think the final results are even acceptable.

Hold on, I’ve said “final results”? Take it easy… I’m still thinking about coloring it… But that’s another story, I’ll have to learn a lot more, and have a lot of more free time… So I’ll leave that for the future…

Oh, and what makes my idea be just a little bit different of what can be seen in other zombie pin-ups is… The fact she says  “Hearts!” instead of  “Brains!”. It’s so cute, it’s so unexpected, it’s so… black widow…

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That’s it, see ya…