Hot Mess - Work In Progress

It was requested I draw a waitress serving skeletons, or rather, failing to serve the skeletons for the Hot Mess pulp magazine. Pretty general guidelines. I decided since the crew of authors was all about diversity in science fiction and fantasy that it would be a good idea to draw a person of color on the front. I personally knew very little about how black women were portrayed in the media and following a recent comment discussion about what is and is not respectful I went to change that before continuing. I confess that my first wip reflects that lack of understanding as what I drew closely resembled a sexy Jezebel type figure or something close to it. The over simplified version of the why the Jezebel stereotype is a problem is that it was used to justify sexual domination and rape of black women during slavery. I wanted to move away from that by showing sexy, smart, and sweet at the same time. (she has softer features than my last version) The cigarette is replaced by the pencil and the pad will probably have rocket design specs on it, I'm undecided.

The mission of this piece is to grab attention and capture the pulp magazine aesthetic. Still working on both of those but wanted to shared the work as it progresses