Pretty Poison Ivy

Excerpt from Clothes make the Character: Venus de Gotham:

Yowza.

Jokes aside, Since I know Ivy more then PG, I went a lot deeper into the redesign, remaking her whole character, combining some of my personal favourite versions.

Anywho, I kept the “queen of the green” idea. I actually came up with a few different “outfits” for her--- when she’s relaxed, she has less growths on her body and her hair is down. She's also butt naked... but this image was more visually interesting. (and I don't have to worry about censorship, yay!)

When she wants to sit high up, her feet leave the trunk-like boots, and are only covered in bark. The bark can cover her entire body, acting like armour. This Ivy doesn't see herself as human, hence why she doesn’t care about clothing. She treats her body like she’s her own planet earth, something for her plants to make a home on and can grow right from her body. This means that her body is literally a weapon, instead of just figuratively.

This image here is more of an empowered Ivy. And no, I don’t mean female empowerment. I mean she’s literally powered up, with plants growing sporadically on her body, preparing to defend. This Ivy sees herself, as one iteration put it, “mother nature's arm”. The ones coming on out of her head acts like a crown, holding up her hair as well (the one part of her Arkham city design I actually liked). One thing that always sticks to Ivy is that she has a lot of ego. When in the presence “delicate human modesty” (ok that was sarcasm), she puts something almost glamorous on, something to show that her enemies are dealing with something higher then themselves: A Goddess of the Green.

I pushed the plant aspect even more, basing a lot of her design on Dryads and Fey Folk. And I swear, I had no idea how she looked in Swamp Thing before I drew this (seriously, need to buy that comic!)

Now she has plants growing from her, her blood now a acting like a fertilizer, but poisonous to mammals, hence why some of the plants are growing right out of her skin.

The sex appeal is still there, but it’s more surface. Like her previous versions, it's purely an act. A way to manipulate her prey. Due to her pheromones, it doesn't’ really matter what Poison Ivy looks like, but I wanted to keep those trade mark curves of her. And I want to make her silhouette recognizable from the other sirens. Harley is lean and skinny, Catwoman is, well, cat-like and much more sexualized, and Ivy is toned, curved and meaty, like a woman in a renaissance painting.

I would love to see Ivy like this. Okay, maybe not exactly like this. I'm still a sucker for the original costume. But I would love to see comics have a sexy characters, without exploit them, even when nude.

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So ya, here's my remake of poison Ivy. Overall, I like what I did and I'm mainly sad that I didn't have enough time to finish all of her other outfits I had come up with. I had enough for an entire character sheet!

Also... Sigh, okay, I'm not liking the plant in the background. Tried to go more stylized with it, but it just sticks out too much. Other then a few picky things, I'm really happy with it. Dang it's good to use copics again...

You can read the whole article here.

Okay, so that's it for now! Remember, now the site will be updating sporadically and not on a weekly basis.

Seeya,

 Tegan Dumpleton aka SlugLady28