Darth Vader 25 Variant Cover

I was honoured to be asked to contribute a variant cover for Marvel's final issue of their Darth Vader comic series.  This was the first time I did a published Star Wars illustration (not counting the endless amounts of unpublished X-wing fighters and Han Solos I drew as a kid).  Marvel was very generous and gave me a lot of freedom with the art.  In keeping with Lucasfilm's policy, I was asked to submit 2 different roughs which you can see below.

The final art was drawn in ink, coloured dyes and wax crayon, and was purchased by Lucasfilm for their Star Wars archives.

Justice League of America: The Silver Age Vol. 2

Yet another in my continuing series of covers for DC's reprint collections, this is for the 2nd volume of JLA stories from the silver age.  DC's art directors suggested that I should feature Wonder Woman prominently, since she was the smallest figure in the previous cover.  Again, I enjoyed the opportunity to draw the "classic" versions of these heroes, especially Martian Manhunter, who is quickly becoming a a favourite to draw.

This was drawn in ink on board, with colours added digitally.  You can check out the initial pencil rough below.

Golden Age Superman Vol. 2

This is the 2nd cover illustration of Superman I did recently for DC, this time for the 2nd volume of Golden Age Superman reprints.  You can see the cover for volume 1 here.  Once again, I enjoyed trying to come up with another iconic image for my favourite era of Superman stories.

The final art for this was drawn traditionally with ink on board, with colour and effects added digitally.  You can see the rough below.

The Handmaiden

This one was drawn for the New Yorker, to accompany a review of Park Chan-wook's film "The Handmaiden."  It was a pretty fast turnaround time, but I had fun with the assignment.  Any time you get to watch a movie (especially a good one) as part of your job, that's a win.

All the art for this was drawn digitally from an initial pencil sketch.

Silver Age Adam Strange

The next cover in my year long series of DC reprints is the Silver Age Adam Strange.  It was a delight to work on this as Adam Strange is one of my favourite comics characters.  For me, the central theme of the series was the romance between Adam and his love, Alanna.  I was always struck by how the early stories usually ended with Adam alone, light years away from Alanna and dreaming of a way back to her.  I've actually drawn him once before, lost a similar reverie.

The final art for this was drawn in ink, with colours and effects added digitally.  You can see the colour rough below.

Silver Age Green Lantern

Continuing on with the series of covers I drew for DC's reprint collections, here is the one for Green Lantern the Silver Age Vol 1.  The final art for this was drawn completely digitally using Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop.  You can see the initial rough sketch below.

Golden Age Batman

Still another cover for DC's reprint collections, this is for the Golden Age Batman Volume 1.  Clever Batman fans will note that this is an homage to one of the best Batman covers of all time (and my personal favourite Batman cover).

The art for this was drawn in coloured inks with small colour tweaks via photoshop.  You can see the pencil sketch below.

The Silver Age Suicide Squad

Another in my series of cover illustrations for DC Comics reprint collections - this one is the Silver Age Suicide Squad, or Task Force X as I think the group was originally called.  I have to admit I'm mostly unfamiliar with this title or cast of characters, so it took a bit of research to come up with the image.  Still, anything that involves drawing dinosaurs is a fun assignment!

The art for this was drawn traditionally in ink then scanned and coloured digitally.  You can see the final art above and the pencil sketch below.

The New Yorker: Kanye West

I had fun with this one.  I was assigned to do a portrait of Kanye West for the New Yorker, to accompany a review of his album "The Life of Pablo".  As I was given a lot of freedom for this, I thought it'd be nice to paint it up traditionally on paper.   It's always nice when I get the chance to paint something with this much freedom.

The art here was drawn on paper and painted with gouache and ink with some colour manipulation and tweaking in photoshop.

The Flash: the Silver Age Vol. 1

The 3rd image in the series of DC reprint collection covers I've drawn is the Flash.  This one was drawn during an interesting time for me - shortly after the birth of my 2nd child.  Needless to say, our whole family suffering from lack of sleep, so I tried to keep things as simple as possible.

The final art was drawn entirely digitally, from a pencil sketch which you can see below.

Superman: the Golden Age

This was the second in the series of covers I've drawn recently for DC Comics' reprint line.  As you can see, this is for a collection of stories featuring the Golden Age Superman.  I always liked the Simon and Shuster Superman: he was a man of action in those early stories, going after gangsters, crooked developers and war-profiteers among others -- a far cry from the neutered Superman of the 50's and 60's who's biggest concern was trying to stop Lois from guessing his secret identity.

Above you can see the final artwork, which was painted digitally while below you can see a photo of some of my warm-ups and rough sketches as I worked out the concept for this cover.

Justice League of America: the Silver Age Vol. 1

I recently began a series of covers for DC comics, for their line of reprint collections.  I think I'll be doing around 7 or 8 of these.  This cover was for the Justice League of America trade paperback, which collects quite a few stories from the silver age.  I always liked the art from that era, with Mike Sekowsky inked by the excellent Bernard Sachs - such clean lines in that pairing!

Above is the finished cover art, drawn on board in ink and coloured digitally, while below you can see the original ink rough.

Marvel Variant Covers - Batch 3

And here's the final batch of February 2016 variant covers I drew for Marvel Comics.  As mentioned in the last 2 posts, these were drawn in 3 batches from September to November of 2015.  I drew 7 covers a month,  and Marvel graciously gave me 25 titles to choose from.  I ended up drawing 21 covers in total.

This batch contained 2 of my favourite covers I drew - the Scarlet Witch one and the one for the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.  I thought both turned out nicely.

While working on this last series of illustrations, I was also struck by the fact that all 7 covers featured female characters/superheroes.  It's a nice trend in comics and one that brought a smile to my face.

As with the others, most of these were drawn traditionally, in coloured ink on board, with additional detail and colour added after scanning in photoshop. A couple were drawn completely digitally using a combination of photoshop and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro (my favourite digital drawing software).

Above are the final covers and below you can see some of the process thumbnails, roughs and colour sketches I did on the way to the final image.

And that concludes my 3 part post on these Marvel variant covers.  Thanks for reading and my apologies for the long delay between updates on my blog!

Marvel Variant Covers - Batch 2

Continuing on my posts of the variant covers published in February 2016 by Marvel Comics, here is the 2nd batch of illustrations.

Again, these were mostly drawn traditionally, in coloured ink on board, with additional colour work and details added in photoshop after scanning.  A couple of covers were drawn entirely digitally (the Vision and Spider-Gwen).  As before, I was aided in the type treatment by my wife, the excellent designer and illustration Claudia Davila.

Above are the final covers, and below are a few process images of the thumbnails/roughs/pencils that lead to the final art.

Marvel Variant Covers - Batch 1

Around September 2015, I started work on a series of 21 variant covers for Marvel Comics to be published in February 2016.  They were spread out across their entire line of books, and gave me an opportunity to draw some of my favourite superheroes.  Marvel was great to work for, and gave me an enormous amount of freedom to design and draw the covers as I saw fit.

I thought it'd be a little too much to post all 21 of these covers in one post, so I'll split them into batches, just as I did when drawing them.

I drew about 7 covers a month for 3 months.  Most of these were drawn traditionally, in coloured ink on board and then scanned with final details and colouring done in photoshop.  I was aided in the type treatment for these covers by my wife, Claudia Davila, an award winning designer and illustrator.  We collaborated recently on another series of Marvel covers, which I'll share later.

Above is the first batch of covers I drew, and below you can see some of the prep sketches and roughs that led to the final art.