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Knight and Princess... Of MARS — Description
Once again, you have to read the title correctly. First, just Knight and Princess all formal, then a lengthy pause, and then (loudly and passionately) "of Mars", while forming a fist close to your body with one hand and holding out the high in the air and open palm up as impressively as you can.

Boy howdy this was hard. Aside from a couple pictures in art class under the tutelage of psycho High School Art teacher, I'm not sure I've ever spent this much time on a single picture (even including that one time somebody's grandma paid me to paint Batman). First off, I just plain wanted to make sure it was the best damn picture I could possibly make of the two of them (Dejah Thoris and John Carter of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Tales series, for those of you who seriously need to be cooler), but secondly because apparently I suck at drawing male faces from that angle. Apparently I've not drawn the male face (other than Batman's unmasked chin) in quite some time, because Carter's face alone ground this production down to a halt for a couple weeks now.

First things first, the story behind this. After being requested to draw John and Dejah (really, someone requested *me* to draw something) I had to think long and hard over how I wanted to depict them together. I've tried before, but few have turned out good, and the good ones were only simple poses of single individuals, mostly showing off (let's face it) Martian babes. This is honestly the first Carter I've drawn and been satisfied with. Eventually I kind of defined their romance as this chivalric, fairy tale romance (which it totally is, once you get past all the aliens), and of course decided to look up some John Williams Waterhouse pictures for inspiration. This picture itself is posed after a Waterhouse of a knight with his lady on a horse, I just transposed Martian whatnot for the Camelot getups.

Once I had the pose and style, it was time for the characters. In the same vein, I used more Waterhouse for facial references for Dejah ("Hylas and The Sexy, Sexy Nymphs", I believe is the title). I had a costume I was very proud of from earlier, so I used that again, augmenting it with the feet thingies and that green, metal back thingie. Dunno, just liked it.

Carter was the hardest. Again, the costume I already had, so I just reused it again, only a little more detailed. But for whatever reason (I blame the angle) his head took me forever (couple weeks, all on his face, I kid you not). The first one I colored ended up looking like the human-prince version of The Beast, just to give you an idea of how bad it looked. All the rest were turning out just as bad, even with references (several different references). Finally I just traced Ibn Al Schufash from Kingdom Come (Batman and Talia Al Ghul's son from an alternate universe, which is also the only kind of universe in which those two should have a kid together). Thank God for Alex Ross.

Also, that Thoat. Totally just made that up myself. Cool, right? You have no idea how hard it is trying to draw people to scale with an imaginary, horse sized animal with 8 legs. The stripes are cool, too. The curve on them adds depth to the animals body, doesn't it? I think that's the first time I really did that consciously. I am feeling so cool right now.

Last but not lease, don't even try to make me draw a background, cause it's not going to happen. Just not going to happen.