Let’s take a quick look at my process for illustrating the cover to issue #2 of my current mini-series project for DC Comics, “Hawkman/Adam Strange: Out of Time”.  I would love to surprise you and say I did something different here, but no, it’s the same old process just with new art.

I did three cover sketches for my editor to choose from on this cover.  I was a little torn on this one.  I liked both A and B and I would have been happy to do either.  B was chosen with a few modifications suggested by the editor and writer.

Here in the pencils, you can see one of the modifications.  The Thangarian hawkment swarming from the planet added a nice balancing element to the composition.  The planet breaking apart was added after this pencil scan.   Both were excellent suggestions that made the cover stronger.

After I got the okay on the pencils I took the art to the ink stage.  I used almost exclusively brush on this.  Some of the hard lines were inked with a pen but that’s pretty much it.  The fade from the black to the white at the bottom was accomplished by using a couple of different pen sizes and just dabbing dots until I got the effect.  A bit tedious but I wasn’t about to mask off the art and spray it with black splatter.  In my book, that has disaster written all over it.

This is one of the occasions where I chose not to color the cover myself.  The biggest reason was I had a turn around time of only three days to get it designed, penciled, inked and colored.  I am not an efficient enough colorist to do a good job that fast.  So I passed it over to Brad Anderson who was more than up for the task.  To think he did this color job in 24 hours is remarkable to me.

I really like how this turned out and it just made my new favorite list!  See you soon.