Supergirl 41

And here is the cover for Supergirl 41.

For whatever reason, the DC heroes always seem to beg for very saturated, pure colors. When I have tried to pull things back, it always looks odd to me, even though I often shy away from super-saturated colors in my other work. So once again, Supergirl and Superwoman are soaked with red and blue.

Something else to keep in mind about the covers I post here is that they are designed for print on a comic book, and as a result, they will never look as bright and shiny in the real world as they do on a glowing computer display. I have learned over the years to push the levels about 10% further than I think I should while working on the computer. By the time it sees print, it usually looks about right. Early on in my career, I was often frustrated that my printed work always seemed washed-out compared to what I was staring at in Photoshop. I didn't stop to consider the properties and limitations of ink on paper, just one potential pitfall of working digitally.

I suppose I could knock the saturation back just a touch on the JPEG's I post here to better approximate the printed look, or better yet, you folks can go buy the books!

Thanks for looking!

Joshua

Supergirl 39

This is the cover to issue 39 of Supergirl, featuring Reactron.

I wasn't sure how to go about rendering all of the metal, and wound up experimenting quite a bit. I started with a quick digital sketch as a foundation (which I used to get approval for the image from my editor) and made a new line drawing by tracing the rough sketch cleanly. I then shaded the line drawing by hand with some water-soluble graphite pencils, which I was able to blend with a clean wet brush. I also went in with some white paint to pull out some highlights. I scanned the gray "chrome" rendering back into the computer, placed it over my basic sketch, and tried several different blending modes to marry it with the base layer. It required quite a bit of brushing and smudging to look decent.

After a lot of playing around, I somehow arrived at this. I'm not sure if I pulled off exactly what I had in mind originally, and the metal is more convincing in some areas than others, but that's how it goes.

As soon as I finished this one, I went straight to work on another Supergirl cover, which I will post this weekend.

Thanks for stopping by.

Joshua

Supergirl 40

Here is the Supergirl 40 cover. It seems an identity will be revealed. Gasp!

I skipped over issue 39 due to some deadline troubles which made me work out of order, but I will be providing the cover for that issue as well. I'll be sure to post it here as soon as it is finished.

To those of you who have been waiting patiently for me to make available more original art, I apologize for the delay. I will try to get everything online soon.

All the best,

Joshua

Bugs

Faerie

City of Fire

Vixen 5

Supergirl 38

Here is the cover to Supergirl issue 38. It is drawn in ink and colored in Photoshop. It grew increasingly colorful and "glowy" as I went along. When I started out, I rendered the background character (Superwoman) in natural light, with a lot of contrast and a fair amount of detail. Unfortunately, it looked like a Sears portrait, so I kept working on it. I knew what I wanted, something atmospheric and somewhat cosmic, but for whatever reason, I kept drawing a blank on how to do it. Eventually, with a lot of constructive criticism from my wife, I stumbled onto something that worked well enough.

My wife also had me reduce the size of Supergirl's left hand, which was originally rather large, although I didn't see it as the enormous baseball mitt that my wife did. Apparently, I tend to draw overly large hands with some regularity. I have also learned that I am inclined to draw gigantic heads. My wife claims that Supergirl's noggin on the cover of issue 35, the newspaper cover, is a good example of my pumpkin-headed tendencies.

For those of you who check the comic book solicitations in the Previews catalog, you can see the earliest incarnation of this issue's cover in the solicitations. I couldn't finish it completely in time to make the catalog's deadline, so we had to go with what I had completed at that time. You can imagine your own wagon wheel and scenic backdrop.

Thanks for looking,

Joshua

Supergirl lines

I've had several requests to share more line art along with the finished color work. To satisfy those requests and pass some time while I finish up some more work, here is the line art for two recent Supergirl covers.

Both are drawn in ink, but the Supergirl versus Silver Banshee image is drawn in my more typical fine-line style, with great attention given to each line. On the other hand, the Superwoman descending image is a little bit of a departure in that I first sketched the figure in blue pencil with a fair amount of midtones and rendering. Unsure of how to approach the final line art, I eventually threw caution to the wind and went at it with the pens, replacing the blue shading with linework. If you go back and look at the final color version in my October 18th post, you will see that I wound up coloring out a lot of the linework anyway, but it did serve as a good foundation for the color by injecting some movement in the line.

How those first strokes go down on the paper can really influence the final look of an image, no matter how much time we spend on it. It is sometimes good to mix things up a little in the early stages to force a new approach when finishing the image- more opportunities for experimentation and the blessed happy accident.

Also, for those folks who have been contacting me about purchasing original art, I will have more art available soon (including the above drawings), so please keep checking the blog for updates.

Thanks very much to everyone for their interest.

Joshua

The Silver Door

This is the wraparound cover for "The Silver Door", the forthcoming sequel to "The Ruby Key" from Holly Lisle's "Moon and Sun" series of fantasy novels from Scholastic.

The line art was drawn in ink and colored in Painter and Photoshop. I designed the dragon/bird ship based on notes and sketches from the author, although I kind of went off on my own a bit with the flourishes in the armor.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of this cover was settling on the size of the ship. Although the author's original notes had the ship substantially larger, it was decided that my initial layouts left the characters too small. After a lot of discussion with the editor and several more passes at the layout, I had to adjust the scale of the ship quite a bit, reducing its size relative to the characters in order to make them more visible.

This is a common dilemma in illustration; it is very easy to imagine characters riding a giant beast, or in the window of a huge castle, but when artists are asked to draw such a scene while capturing both the human-sized characters (even their smiling faces) along with the gigantic elements, it is often an impossible task. I first ran into this trouble when I started in comic books, with writers describing impossible panels: "A massive star-destroyer is hurtling through space, weaving through meteors. Through the cockpit glass, we see the captain gritting his teeth." There are many more examples, but in every case, it's an impossible panel that leads to one irritated artist.

But that's the challenge, and in this case, the ship had to be reduced. As it is, it is still easy to miss the cat!

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Joshua

Two more Vixen covers

Here are the covers to issues 3 and 4 of DC Comics' "Vixen" limited series. We are continuing with the theme of Vixen and animals.

The one with the birds is the cover to the fourth issue. The editor requested the image, and I mentioned that I had already done something very similar with a Supergirl cover a while back (as well as a Sky between Branches image even earlier), but since the Supergirl image has yet to see print, we figured it was okay.

I drew the Vixen cover in Japan and colored it on a laptop without referencing my earlier Supergirl cover. After coming home and seeing them together, I realized they are much more similar than I had imagined.

Now that I think about it, Vixen's pose in the third cover (running with the antelope) is rather similar to a Flash cover I did a while back, too. Wow, I am apparently completely out of ideas for poses.

I've been stepping all over my own toes. I'd better move along.

Joshua

Supergirl 37

Here is the cover to Supergirl issue 37, which actually features Superwoman. The cover follows a theme DC is running through several books the same month, with a character on a black background and up-lighting of some sort.

More soon-

Joshua

Supergirl 35 (or 36)

Here is the cover to Supergirl issue 35, my second as regular cover artist. -UPDATE: It seems that there is an Alex Ross cover lined up for issue 35, so this cover will probably run as the cover for issue 36. I apologize for any confusion.-

I am sorry for not posting more frequently. I will try to pick up the pace!

Thanks for stopping by.

Joshua