Full disclosure: I completed this drawing a long time ago. A long time ago. So long ago, I had to track down the various digital files, which sent me on an adventure across several old thumb drives until eventually digging the original render out of a box to verify some jogged memories. I knew it came during my latest artistic hibernation (even though I said I would stop doing that), but that was about it. And while Rayne was not the absolute last drawing I would do for seven years, it was the last one I would consider making a Dark Side commentary for. I even set up this page and wrote precisely two incomplete, place-holder paragraphs that no one should ever have to read. So here they are:

If you've ever read these commentaries and wondered what all this "blending" business is about, then hover your mouse over Bloodr(R)ayne(,) and you can see the pre-blended version. Pay particular attention to the highlights on her pants(,) and notice how visible the pencil strokes (are).

On a final note, this marks the first time I finished cleaning up up the construction lines and retouched(ing) the linework of an illustration, looked over the image, and said "y(Y)ou know, I don't think it needs shading. I'm comfortable leaving it as line-only."

—Me (2017)

In 2024, I can’t say with certainty why I scanned it two different times; I can say it was not to demonstrate the difference between blended and unblended shading. I have scanned drawings in prematurely out of impatience, to share a work in progress or get a head start on the Dark Side page. Most likely, however, I found myself happy with the raw pencil strokes and didn’t know if blending would improve it, but I really wanted to give it a try, so I probably scanned it as a backup. And if it turned out better? Then I’d have two versions. Hypothetically, I could have also said, “Done,” then scanned it in, came back a day or two later, and realized, “You know ... the right hair ribbon is a little light. Some lines around her figure and along the right blade could be more pronounced. It could also use a little less contrast to make her skin look more natural—ah, screw it. Let me get my pencil ...” Given I dated it 02/26/2017, scanned it that same day, prepared a web version, then re-scanned it on the 27th, and prepared a web version of that scan, I’m leaning towards backup where I opted to fix the aforementioned issues in the process.

Anyway, I’ve always liked Rayne, going so far as stating that she’s the perfect video game protagonist forever trapped in lackluster media because, let’s be frank, Majesco just wants to use boobs to sell their products. While plenty of women wear skimpy, skin-tight clothes in entertainment, walking the fine line that separates seductive elegance from blatant sluttiness, Rayne undeniably plants her stripper pole on the street corner and pretends that flying her underwear from it somehow makes it a flag. Weirdly, I think what pushes her into whore-land is one singular detail: the garter-like suspender straps connecting her top to her pants¹, which I’m no clothing designer, but 1.) if you’re concerned about keeping your breasts covered (if only for practical reasons), linking a flimsy top to a full-length pair of pants (with boots) seems like a bad idea. That’s why actual suspenders go over the shoulders and never attach to the shirt, itself. That’s probably why the movie costumes, worn by actual women, do not have those straps. 2.) Womens’ hips widen where the femur sockets into the pelvis (it’s what gives them their hour-glass figure). So, skin-tight trousers don’t need help staying up. The natural curves of the female body will keep them up. That’s why actual garters link stockings to a belt-like piece of lingerie worn around the waist, and the only action that attire will be seeing is—never mind.

On a serious note, I like this particular cover of BloodRayne: Prime Cuts #1 because of how her upper and lower body twist in different directions. You can see the right side of her ribs (frame left) and the left side of her hip (frame right). Although more subtle, I noticed a similar twist while rendering Jessica Alba where, again, her right side (frame left) becomes more visible the further up her torso you look. And even that slight twist makes the pose infinitely more dynamic and lively than a straight on render, which tends to look stiff and pillar-like (like many of my drawings!) For similar reasons, comic book artists will often render characters with their backs arched more so than what actually occurs in day-to-day life because art isn’t necessarily about absolute one-to-one mimicry of the real world. Just because we can twist our torsos and arch our backs doesn’t mean we do it all the time. We don’t go to the grocery store in a dynamic superhero pose (although, most of us could stand to improve our posture and slouch less.) Anyway, art is about presenting interesting images, and many times that means selective pose choice and strategic exaggerations. In this case, Rayne twists more than what’s natural, but at the same time, it doesn’t look unnatural. Somewhere around 2016, I felt the need to shift my focus from the anatomical study side of figure drawing to the expressiveness of the poses. It’s why I didn’t settle for my first attempt at The Champion. I knew I could do better.

I do recall this render took me many, many hours to complete because I used a mechanical pencil on a sheet of plotter paper, which I’ve complained about ad nauseam in these commentaries, so I won’t repeat myself here. For the grey “wall of fog” backgrounds, I typically sketch in the figure’s lines first, shade the background, then take a tissue and smear everything, even into and through the figure (albeit, less so across exposed fair skin; however, you still want a little grey so you can erase back to white and get highlights). It’s easier to get a consistent value right up to the edge of the subject this way and not end up with a subtle halo because you’re worried about smearing the more detailed shading of, in this case, Rayne. Plus the lines will survive. They’ll fade, but as long as you don’t go overboard rubbing the entire paper down, they’ll remain visible enough that you can trace over and darken them again, and you’ll have a nice consistent base on top of which you can apply the rest of the shading. That’s why the entire background and parts of Rayne are smooth in both versions, resulting in roughly 75% of the “unblended” version actually being blended.

Granted, I could have used a tortillon or blending stump and meticulously smeared the graphite around every nook and cranny of Rayne’s hair, ribbons, blades and body, but with no background, there’s no reason to, especially considering the source didn’t have much of a background either.

In general, I try to save the darkest shading for last because the graphite gets on your hand and then transfers to parts of the drawing you don’t want (See the Fun Fact for an example). But that doesn’t mean I isolate regions and don’t work on them at all. Rather, I tackle shading in phases—light, medium, and dark—and I will shade the dark areas at the same time as the light areas. I just don’t make them dark yet because you can always make things darker. So, I do multiple passes, touching up the light areas and darkening the darker areas to minimizing the chance of unwanted smudges while developing all the shading as a cohesive whole. This takes forever, though, as you do end up shading and reshading (and reshading yet again) the exact same regions, essentially baby stepping to the final drawing. Perhaps I was reluctant to blend Rayne’s outfit because I feared losing all the precision highlights that I worked so meticulously to render. Then again, maybe I felt I made some of those highlights too prominent and decided a little strategic smearing was the answer. Who knows. It’s been seven years.

Those with knowledge of graphic design no doubt noticed I made a compositional no-no in having Rayne’s sword meet the lower-right corner, creating an overpowering and unwanted focal point that leads the eye off the page, never to return. Those same people might also wonder why a comic book cover is square. It’s not. The actual cover is a standard rectangle, but I had a square sheet of scrap plotter paper. I extended the right blade to fit the page, giving zero thought to composition. I really didn’t give any thought to the swords at all, to be perfectly honest. I focused on Rayne, herself. Case in point: in the source image, her other blade extends up and goes behind the Bloodrayne logo, which I could have filled in the blanks—I did it for her other sword—but I didn’t want to draw much past Rayne’s head. Funnily enough, I still didn’t position Rayne on the page very well because the cover stops a little after the black vinyl fully envelopes her thigh. That’s why, in my render, she looks like a balloon being inflated at the knees (and the smooth blending really doesn’t help.) Oh well.

Like I said, this came during a time when my interest in drawing died out. Sure, I made an effort to work on something from time to time even if my heart wasn’t in it. But Rayne, here, did grow on me, and as a result, it occupies this weird place of being half throw away doodle and half Dark Side render. Having two different versions is ultimately what pushed it over the edge, prompting me to start this entry seven years ago. The five different digital copies floating around old flash drives informs me that I explored different options to compare and contrast the two, finally settling on the hover-over effect, but, for unknown reasons, I never developed it any further than that initial setup. I didn’t even properly align the two images, resulting in a noticeable jump when switching between them. I did apply a rectangular crop to bring them in line with the actual cover (and cut out the overpowering focal point in the lower-right corner). But as this commentary took on an archeology tone, I decided to go back to the raw scan and recreate the DSotS versions as squares, cropping them only to eliminate the aforementioned jump when switching back and forth.

Like I said, full disclosure. After seven years, I felt I owed my (non-existent) readers that.

—Jay Wilson
(02/01/2024)