illostribute: Norman Saunders

Toby Neighbors is a genius. Not only did he have the wonderfull idea to create illostribute, a blog where contemporary illustrators interpret the works of great classic ilustrators, but he also managed to gather some really incredible artists to participate on the posts.
Today the third post went online and it is an explosion of great art. This time the topic was pulp artist Norman Saunders. His large body of work contains pulp in every variety you can think of: western, noir, science fiction, horror, you name it. So this is something you can really have fun with, which reflects greatly in the post.
But I do have to say this also made it very hard for me to pick something. A goofy pulp cover would have been fun, but whenever I went through his work this one image always really caught my eye:

The feminist in me was thinking, Man, what a ****load of cliches, while the artist just thought "What a powerfull, dark image, great composition, cool poses, and flaming colors! And how can someone not love that snakeguys design?" So I made a rough copy, that doesnt do the original any justice, but I'm posting it anyway since I want to share my proccess:

I played around with the shapes and also decided to amp up the sexual undertones (I mean, she is in this submissive sexy sacrifice position and about to be penetrated by a giant snake, she might as well look like she's enjoying it) and finally came up with an interpretation I liked:

And vectorized it. At first I tried to work with gradients but for some reason I dont like the look of them lately, so I got rid of them.

While working on this I always had a song in mind, which to me represents the sexyness and darkness I wanted to acchieve here, so its best you listen to it, while you look at the picture ;)