Batgirl Crouching Beside Crime Scene Tape — Print & Oil Painting

Yellow is what organises this picture. Enormous block capitals run diagonally across the lower half in flat cadmium, printed rather than painted, with the ghost of a black bat shape behind them and more lettering in a white box at the bottom corner. It is signage: a poster or a banner, laid flat and photographed from above, and the figure has been arranged on top of it.

She lies forward on her elbows across that lettering with the legs folded up behind, chin lifted, looking straight out. The suit is glossy black from throat to heel with a bright yellow bat filling the chest, a yellow buckled belt at the hip and a matching strap high on the arm. Black hair falls loose past the shoulders, the cape spills off to the right, and the boots are heeled and drawn with real attention.

Technically this is pure comic book work. Every form is closed with a firm black contour of varying weight, the highlights on the latex are laid on as hard white wedges with no blending whatsoever, and the shading under the arms is a single flat grey. The face is the only place the artist has allowed any softness, and even there the eyes and the dark lipstick are drawn rather than modelled.

Worth saying plainly, since the title raises the question: the yellow underneath her is printed lettering on a white ground, not tape across a doorway, and there is no scene, no chalk and no barrier anywhere in the frame. What the picture actually is, is a costume photographed against advertising.

From our DC Universe collection, beside the same costume in a glossier three-quarter study and a version of the character standing under the Bat-Signal.