Actually it was yesterday (Feb. 26) but I got occupied with stuff and didn't get to post here about it.
A few years ago I determined that February 26 would be Tetsuko's birthday, in response to readers asking when it was. I decided that I'd base the date on the earliest dated artwork I made of her. Which was not as easy as it sounds, because back in the day I was very negligent in dating my artwork. But I remembered doing so for Tetsuko, so I sought out and found a page in one of my sketchbooks that bore my very first sketches of our beautiful blonde muscle goddess:
...1989? that makes these drawings 37 years old! So for this anniversary of the creation* of Tetsuko, I decided to do a "how it started/how it's going" comparison. The following drawing is another sketch I did on or very shortly after the sketches above.
How it started:
How it's going:
...an illustration I finished yesterday, redrawing the 1989 sketch using Tetsuko's current character design.
*I list 2-26-1989 as her creation date, because that was the day I began to try to design her. I'd actually had the idea (anime/manga-style muscle girl) and the tentative name (after a falcon in the James Clavell novel Shōgun). (Needless to say, the "tentative" name didn't stay tentative for long...)
Here's hoping that next year I can remember to do a commemorative drawing of her enjoying her birthday!