Here is my first sketch cover that I have been requested to do. The little dude in the front is the clients son who also wanted to be a hulk! This one is going to be signed by Lou Ferrigno at comicon.
( In case you don't know what a sketch cover is, They are actual comic books that are printed on a limited run, with blank untreated covers which are called "Blank Variant Covers. This allows an artists to do what they do, and that way you have a comic book, with original artwork on it. Kind of cool. Of course, directly behind the blank cover, you have the artwork that was used in the comic.)
Well the first lesson in sketch covers that I learned is "not all sketch covers were created equal" The stock on this particular cover was garbage, very waxy. You can see in the 2nd progress pic that the copic markers I was using started to pool up and not absorb into the paper, thus making it impossible to blend the colors together. In the third progress pic you'll see that I had to go over the entire thing with colored pencils in order to add shading & to try to even out the blotchiness of the markers ( which to be quite honest, wasn't too much better, its like drawing on wax paper). So next time I get one of these, I'll have to try acrylic paint. I did want to try that rather than the colored pencils, however time constraints didn't allow. I had to finish three covers that night, and it took me until 5 am to get them done.
on the final pic I tackled the background. Now normally I'm against flat backgrounds, but I knew that a black background was going to make the highlights pop. I decided to encompass the main figures in black and to transition out with splatters using some black & white acrylic inks, instead of trying to shade out the transitions because of the fact that the copics weren't going to give me even gradations.
Anyway...lesson learned. The other two covers that I did were walking dead 109 covers, i'll post those later.
