Blackwood: The Mourning After variant cover/process
Added 2019-11-22 00:06:20 +0000 UTCThe new Blackwood mini-series from Dark Horse Comics was solicited today, and it will have a variant cover drawn by me and colored by Sarah.
Here's some process scans I have:
Blackwood variant inks
Cover rough scanned in b&w
Cover rough done in red pencil
I did a few roughs that I tossed, most of them on printer paper. The rough above was done in my sketchbook, I liked it so I tore the page out, scanned it and then printed it in enlarged sections which I glue-sticked together. Put that on my lightpad (thin lightbox) and started penciling. You can see I moved some of the elements around and added several more character heads. I'm not happy with a few of the heads, I don't know why they slipped through the inking process looking awkward, but, on the other hand, there are some things about it I like. I over-did the texture "halo" using Tombow pens and I'm afraid that's going to muddy a lot more than I wanted when the cover prints at a smaller size. The original is about 10" by 14" iirc.
I have been doing this for decades and still lose track of how print works while drawing for reduction. I forget to hold back on texturing and crosshatching and get lost in making all the little lines and gradations. I get too caught up in how the original works, when I should be concentrating on how it will print. Urrgh. I need to fight the compulsion to cover every bit of paper with lines. But I don't trust my drawing enough to stand on its own. Someday I hope that will change. I keep working towards it but then the crosshatching begins again...
Oh, fyi, Blackwood: The Mourning After #1 goes on sale Feb 12, 2020. Art by Veronica and Andy Fish, lettering by Greg McKenna, script by me.
