GHOST #3 Cover Step by Step

Here's how I created the cover to Ghost #3, out this month from Dark Horse. Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Christopher Sebela and Geraldo Borges.

First thing was to come up with a cover sketch. These are sketches I submitted to Editor Patrick Thorpe at Dark Horse - drawn at 2x3 inches in my sketchbook in pencil and pen and then cleaned up and colored in Photoshop.

I started penciling the cover  with light blue and HB lead on 12" x 18" Bristol Board.

Almost finished pencils.

A few more details and cleaning up - final pencils.

Rachel Dodson's initial inks on the cover

Rachel uses Windsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable #2 Brush and Higgins Black Magic ink to ink the covers with.

Rachel's final inks…then the art is scanned and cleaned in Photoshop.

The first stage of coloring is to have the art "flatted".

Flatting allows the colorist to choose an area to color at any point throughout the coloring proces

My initial rough in of the colors, done in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom Intuos Graphics Tablet. This is about a half hour.

I used warm foreground colors and the cool greens in the refection to separate.

Refining colors and begin turning black lines into color lines.

The final colors - I added Ghost's reflection to the window and turned the villain from Black to Dark Green to help the illusion of depth.

This ended up being my favorite image of Ghost I ever drew and as it's the last cover I'm doing (for now) - I was very pleased to go out on a high note!

The cover is out in stores starting today!

You can find this comic at your local comic book retailer

http://www.comicshoplocator.com/Home/1/1/57/575

Enjoy!

TD

Blacksad Incentive Sketch for Juanjo Guarnido's Kickstarter

Here's the Blacksad drawing I did as an incentive for Blacksad artist's Juanjo Guarnido's Kickstarter - 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/120326342/juanjo-guarnido-in-the-freak-kitchen

For more about Blacksad

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/16-361/Blacksad-HC

 and Juanjo-

https://www.facebook.com/juanjo.guarnido.artist

Drawn on 9" x 12" Canson  Mi-Teintes Pastel Paper. I start off the drawing with a Col Erase Light Blue Pencil then outline the face and body with a Pitt XS Black Pen - which is small enough NOT to bleed when - I go in with the Copic Warm Grey 1 marker to rough in the initial values.

Detail on the head.

Pretty dang loose but I have an idea where I'm going...

Using Copic Warm Grey 204 Markers I begin refining the drawing and volumes. I also use the Pitt XS pen to nail down the remainder of the line art and some flowers to the drawing.

Details of the head - you can see I start picking out more of the important element of the drawing.

The final drawing - I used Copic Warm Grey 4 to nailed down the darker volumes. I used Pitt F and Zig Mangaka Flexible F to thicken and finalize the line art. And finally a Prismacolor White Pencil for the highlights.

Details of the final drawing.

About an hour start to finish.

TD

Ghost #1 Step by Step PART THREE Color

Here's the final step of creating the cover to Ghost #1, out this month from Dark Horse. Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Christopher Sebela and art by Ryan Sook.

Here we go!

The first stage of coloring is to have the art "flatted".

Flatting allows the colorist to choose an area to color at any point throughout the coloring process.

  My initial rough in of the colors, done in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom Intuos Graphics Tablet.

I had the idea of an orange sky in my head the whole time

However, I couldn't get the right orange so I switched to a green sky.

Now that I'm happy with green background I began changing the rest of the orange elements to green.

Pushing the lighter areas of the figure and foreground.

Using a custom brush tool, I began adding texture to buildings.

Pushing the lights and darks to help separate Ghost and the FG building from the BG.

Began turning the black lineart into color on the figure.

Turning the BG lineart into color lines - really helps separate.

Fine tuning.

And finally added some clouds and lights to the sky for the 

Final colors…

TD

Ghost #1 Cover Step by Step PART TWO Pencils to Ink

Here's the next step of creating the cover to Ghost #1, out this month from Dark Horse. Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Christopher Sebela and art by Ryan Sook,

After I turned in the pencils seen in PART ONE I received feedback from Dark Horse to make some minor changes to Ghost's costume so I used it as an opportunity to change a couple of things that bothered me in the original pencils.

 I started on a new piece of paper with a blue line printout of the original pencils on it. I used light blue and HB lead on 13" x 19" Bristol Board.

I wanted to give the pose a little more dynamism and movement - so I had Ghost's right foot coming "atcha"!

And this is what I gave to Rachel Dodson to work on because…

Rachel had started working on the original pencils.

Rachel uses Windsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable #2 Brush and Higgins Black Magic ink to ink the covers with.

This is Rachel's inks over my original pencils.

This is the ink's over the 2nd pencils.

And the magic of Photoshop where I combined the images together.

Onto the color…

TD

Ghost #1 Cover Step by Step PART ONE

Here's how I created the cover to Ghost #1, out this month from Dark Horse. Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Christopher Sebela and art by Ryan Sook!

First thing was to come up with a cover sketch. These are sketches I submitted to Editor Patrick Thorpe at Dark Horse - drawn at 2x3 inches in my sketchbook in pencil and pen and then cleaned up and colored in Photoshop.

 Next I worked on the costume and look of Ghost in order to figure out how I was going to draw her. I actually drew an issue of the original 90's series when I didn't have a clue what I was doing so this was a great opportunity to revisit the character.

Figuring out the hood and cape.

Figuring the body structure and hood/scarf.

How the costume works underneath.

I went back and forth with Patrick (and Dark Horse and Mike Richardson) and Ryan with these sketches to get their feedback and suggestions, especially Ryan's as it's his book.

 Once we were all cool, I started penciling the cover  with light blue and HB lead on 13 x19 " Bristol Board.

The finished pencils - or so I thought!

More to come!

TD

Halo:Initiation #1 Variant Cover Step by Step

Here's how I created the variant cover to Dark Horse's Halo : Intitation #1 comic book featuring a fight between Sarah Palmer and a Brute Chieftain. 

These are sketches I submitted to Editor Dave Marshall at Dark Horse - drawn at 2x3 inches in my sketchbook in pencil and pen and then cleaned up and colored in Photoshop. Microsoft, the creators of Halo, make the final decision on the cover and choose A.

 The pencils were drawn with light blue and HB lead on 13 x19 " Bristol Board. I ended up having to add paper to the right side and top because the Brute needed to be bigger plus his weapon is GINORMOUS!

So the final size of the original artended up being 14 x 22" - BIG!

I was asked to change Palmer's kicking leg - good advice!

Microsoft and Dark Horse supplied me with a ton of great reference material for this project which was really helpful as fans of this play with these characters in 3 dimensions in the video games - so it was important to everything look "right".

Rachel Dodson's inks were done over my pencils - she used a Windsor Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable Brush #2 and Black Magic Ink.

Detail of Rachel's inks featuring the Brutes left arm guard.

My initial stab at the coloring. Microsoft asked for more detail/definition in the background and I wasn't thrilled with what I had done so...

I dropped in an entirely new background which works 10x better.

Colors for this done in Photoshop CS3 using my trusty 11 year old Wacom Intuos Graphics Tablet.

Details of the Sarah Palmer colors.

The book ships from Dark Horse  August 2013.

TD