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.