Supergirl by Kevin Nowlan

I've been looking for a nice Kevin Nowlan piece to add to my collection for quite a while, and I really couldn't hope to find a better example than this. Huge thanks to Kelvin Mao for giving me a shot at it--thank you for remembering me! I don't have any particular connection to Supergirl but ever since I saw this piece I was really struck by the strength and beauty of this image.

Interesting history to this one (and I won't pretend to know the whole story), but if you look up "Nowlan Supergirl" on CAF you'll find several different versions of this image--a few in pencil and at least two others in ink. Eric DLS has a great write-up on his version, and according to that this piece started out as a pencil sketch that Nowlan revisited in ink several times over the years in effort to better capture the qualities he loved in his original sketch.

To steal a line from Eric, there are things I like about each of the various versions that are on CAF, but the unique features I love about this particular version are Nowlan's treatment of her hair (with the shadowed portions framing her face), her slightly tougher expression, and her slightly exaggerated musculature, particularly on her neck and biceps. Hard to say for sure which version was done first but Kelvin has had this piece since 1999, so it's at least that old.

At some point I'll try to replace with a higher quality scan--this might be the most beautiful piece of artwork in my collection, it presents incredibly well in person. And it's also drawn large, not quite twice-up but much larger than a standard art page.