Taarna : Barry Kitson (original pencils)

At the beginning of every month, Barry Kitson takes suggestions from followers of his Facebook page for his daily warmup sketches. For quite some time -- at least a couple of years, I think -- I dropped a suggestion every month like clockwork that Barry draw Taarna, my longtime heroine from Heavy Metal, the animated film (and more recently, in the magazine itself, and in comics too). Barry often hinted that he might get to Taarna eventually, but it hadn’t happened yet.

At long last, Barry’s partner and art rep messaged me that he not only had drawn my Taarna suggestion, but had gone far beyond a mere warmup sketch with her. In fact, he’d drawn something so detailed that he had decided to offer a painted version of the piece to the editorial staff at Heavy Metal for possible use as a cover. As it turned out, the Heavy Metal folks passed on the opportunity, so I ended up being able to buy both the original pencils and the finished watercolor painting. (There’s also a third version that Barry inked over a blueline scan, which I did not purchase and that went to another fan.) The two pieces now hang side-by-side on my office wall.

This is the original pencil version. The watercolor rendition can be viewed elsewhere in this gallery.