Painting Henrietta
I’m currently painting a desktop background from an anime I’ve been watching called ‘Gunslinger Girl’. This is pretty much my first painting ever, and I’m getting quite a bit of help from my artist mum. This is the original background:
The character depicted is Henrietta, a trained child assassin. To quote the Wikipedia article:
Set in modern-day Italy, Gunslinger Girl follows the exploits of the Social Welfare Agency (often referred to as simply “the Agency”), ostensibly a charitable institution sponsored by the Italian government. While the Agency professes to aid the rehabilitation of the physically injured, it is actually a military organization specializing in counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism. It comprises two independent branches, Public Safety (公安部, kōan-bu) and Special Ops (作戦部, sakusen-bu), with Public Safety being its surveillance and intelligence-gathering arm and Special Ops its anti-terrorist division. Special Ops is itself divided into Sections 1 and 2, the latter of which employs young girls fitted with cybernetic implants as agents. The implants, which consist of synthesized muscles and carbon fiber frames, result in heightened strength and reflexes as well as high resilience to damage and pain. Each girl is paired with a male trainer, or “handler,” and together they are referred to as a fratello (Italian for "brother"). The handler is responsible for the training, welfare and field performance of his charge, and is free to use whatever methods he considers suitable. While these methods vary according to the handler, a common part of each girl’s regimen is brainwashing called “conditioning,” which produces a deadly assassin with unquestioning loyalty to her handler.
Henrietta is one of the girls going through training.
This is is the canvas after some of the drawing was done (the canvas is 30 by 40 inches):
And after some of the painting had been done:
And the painting as it is currently:
It will be a little while before I’m finished, but I can say with some certainty that this will be AWESOME!
For you art nerds out there, this is being done in acrylic first, then I’ll go over it with oil to blend in some of the blurry edges e.g. the muzzle flash. I’ll keep this blog updated with my progress, so check back to see the finished result!