Digging Down

I've had a Dardevil vs Elektra piece on my desk for probably close to a decade now. It started as a loose sketch that I was going to turn in to a large sized, traditional media (pencil and ink if I recall correctly) poster. That stalled out before I made it past the pencil stage, and so when I found it hidden away a few years later  I digitized what I had and started toying around with it in photoshop, having no clue what I was doing and moving on pretty quickly. Years later, between semesters at ACAD, I pulled the files up again and laid the groundwork for a new piece. I had planned to pull it together with a strong background, one of my earliest attempts at such a thing. I think I built the piece up too much in my head though, and began to see it as a way to prove to myself that I was a capable artist. As the pressure to wow myself increased I started experimenting with elements of design until I hit a point where I had over complicated things and needed to pull back. Attempts at simplification were frustrating as I didn't really know what I was trying to achieve. On top of that, I was finding that I really enjoyed having multiple pieces on the go at once, and so easily moved to other things, returning less and less often. The file never left my "To Do" folders, and I'd open it up and redraw it, tweak colors, or make notes every so often, but it never grabbed me the way it had when I was first working with it. Last time I opened it up, I realized that a big part of what was bothering me about it was its landscape orientation, so I started thinking about doing something similar, but as a new composition. A few hours here and there over the last few weeks (and a few more spent trying to nail down a pose for Daredevil) and this is where we're at.

I've included some of the old files underneath for those who might be curious.

The red border was meant to hold several quick snapshot like illustrations of moments shared between the characters, some of their romantic relationship, and some of their fight against one another. I was never 100% happy with the actual drawing, so the final image is taken from the last time I went in and began redrawing things from scratch. Thanks for checking it out!