TWO book cover art

Now that the colours on Paradise Mechanism are all done I can get back to some eariler projects that I had to put on hold. Not least among them, the cover art for Ryan Henry's survival horror novella 'Two'.

Although I've been away from this for what must be the best part of a couple of months, ideas and influences have been percolating at the back of my mind the whole time. In particular, I've been thinking about how I wanted this to be a bit different, not just a run-of-the-mill depiction of a scene from the story. And it's not a comic book - it's prose this time, so I'm going for a more design-based outcome now.

Been studying a lot of cover art by Dave Johnson - a guy who, along with Mike Mignola, has to be one of the best cover artists working these days. Yes, it's comics they generally produce covers for, but they both infuse their work with a very strong sense of design, making them simple, bold, iconic and high-impact. There's also a dash of Hitchcok/Saul Bass going on here too.

El Bigote - Shaky Kane cover (colours)

2012 is turning out to be a great year so far - I just got to colour this fantastic cover by none other than the legendary SHAKY KANE for an upcoming issue of El Bigote (the excellently titled '13 Dead Federales'). Whilst working on this I kept remembering how Shaky's art used to grace the pages of 2000 AD in my formative years, and had to keep pinching myself.

If you haven't already, go check out El Bigote here and here.

El Bigote - anatomy of a cover

Stage 1. El Chivo provides the pencils, having done the leg-work in terms of the overall idea and composition (this is a wraparound cover btw)

Stage 2. Inked with my Pentel brush pen

 

Stage 3. Greytones are added digitally to give more depth

 

Stage 4. Blocks of colour are added in Photoshop (the part of the process that's known as flatting)

 Stage 5. Final colours - highlights, shadows and textures are the last things to be added

Then it's off to Bolt-01 and Owen Watts for the logos to be added, before the comic heads off to the printers very soon. I've already seen some of El Chivo's roughs for upcoming El Bigote adventures and I'm really looking forward to inking those too.

El Bigote cover art - WIP teaser

One of several projects I'm juggling at the moment, here is a teaser of the cover art for the forthcoming independent comic 'El Bigote', which is written and drawn by my good friends Matt McLaughlin & El Chivo respectively. El Bigote takes place in the mexican afterlife, and from what I've seen so far features all manner of insane characters, shoot-outs and shenanigans

El Chivo pencilled this magnificent wraparound cover and I was asked to ink the sucker. Now, inking other people's work is not something I have a lot of experience with, so that in itself was reason enough to say yes. Add in the fact that El Chivo's art is pretty flippin' dynamic and full of humour and menace, plus Matt's a great up-and-coming writer with a gift for memorable characters and I was sold.

On top of inks, I'm now part-way through colouring the cover, and have also agreed to take on the mantle of ongoing inker for the next batch of actual comic pages. It never hurts to broaden your arsenal does it? (is that even a phrase?)

PARAGON #10 Cover Art

I proudly present the cover art for the upcoming issue 10 of excellent British small press title Paragon. The actual cover is slightly different - editor Davey Candlish requested a deep red background as opposed to the grey-blue one I've used here. I quite like this one personally, so thought I'd show it here - and when the comic comes out you can see the red version.

The brief was simple - a montage depicting the 4 main characters featured inside the issue: Icarus Dangerous, Mekko-Sapiens, Spencer Nero and Jikan. Had the most fun with Jikan, and just had to give him the spotlight! I also begged Dave to let me include Battle Ganesh - who doesn't feature in this particular issue - simply because I love the character.

Icarus Dangerous

Part of the cover art for Paragon issue 10.

2000 AD cover mock up

Added a bit of colour and turned the Anderson pic into a cover.

The Spider man comes

On the Emperor's reecommendation, turned that demon pic into an entry for the current competition over at Warren Ellis' Whitechapel site. The brief was too re-imagine the cover of 'Amazing Adult Fantasy' #15, knowing only that you have to depict a character called 'Spiderman'. Thought this would make for a suitably macabre take on the subject.

PS - big thanks to Dave Evans (Bolt-01) for the ace logos.

Mock up cover idea

This is NOT official! It's just an idea Working on a coloured version too - but couldn't resist this ultraviolent sin-city-esque version.

PS borrowed the official logo - hope you don't mind Kev, Dave & Rich!