Wendy is a character that has been the focal point of some of my more mediocre and embarrassing projects during my years as a young, amateur artist. But she's been a part of my artistic life so long, that I don't think I'll ever be able to stop drawing her. Pretty dorky, isn't it?
Pictured above is a scrapped color image I may redo later, and a snippet from a planned portfolio that's pretty slow-going at the moment. (I'm hoping to have it done by 2045)
I know the art may be a bit jarring to those familiar with Wendy via the old webcomic, as I did, in fact, change her design recently. It was mainly done to bring her in line with my modern style, and also to kind of separate her completely from the "
Cutewendy" character that spawned from her.
Admittedly, the resemblance is pretty marginal now, but it is the same girl, really! She's got the glasses and the orange skin and the green hair and everything. But Wendy was always designed as a big bag of fetishes, so I guess it makes sense to apply two of my more recent ones, those being retro hairstyles (see
Doctror Voluptua) and "hardbodies", which I guess would be the term for people who look pretty fit, without going so far as to become huge mutant bodybuilders. Good real life examples of this include
Susana Spears and
Veronika Zemanová.
The first instance of "new" Wendy was posted over at
Fearsome Oekaki though I know I made some sketchbook illustrations of her earlier. Alas, I can't seem to find those.
Though the Wendy comic that ran from from 1999 to 2003 may be over and done and dead and deleted now, Wendy gets to continue her life as a comic character over at Slipshine. This is from my currently ongoing story called "Later".
It may or may not be interesting to note that before the Wendy webcomic site debuted in 2000, Wendy's character was featured in sexy pinups and various adult comics. Most people probably know her from the webcomic, but in reality, her current appearances in Slipshine are a return to form for her.
Although the original cheesecake art of her in the late 90s were from before I even spent a marginal amount of time studying anatomy or basic art principles, and the "sexy" art was pretty terrible. I have to make it clear that when I say "terrible", I truly mean it was completely fucking terrible:
Of course, my work on the "Wendy Project" that preceded the webcomic isn't well-documented, so I hope I'm not making a mistake in letting y'all know about this!
Oh, what the hell, here's a shot the the final incarnation of the Wendy Project website, before it was replaced with the Wendy webcomic site at the turn of the millennium:
It's actually a pretty decent design, though decidedly Wapanese, for reasons that don't need explaining. The comic was actually already running at that point, and linked in the upper-left.
I've been considering bringing a "Wendy" website of this type back, but I already have a lot of websites...
In short... Wendy: From a horribly drawn pin-up girl and pornstar, to a star of a mediocre webcomic, to a (I'd like to think) decently-drawn pinup girl and pornstar.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW.
I conclude with a rather cute panel from a recent Slipshine comic called "Secrets", wherein Wendy wipes herself off.
