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

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

More Kapow! Sketches - Poison Ivy and Ghost

Two more sketches from Kapow! Comicon in London, May 19-20, 2012.

Poison Ivy and Ghost.

Both drawn on 11 x 17 Canson Paper with Blue Pencil, HB LEAD, Pitt and Copic Pens and Prismacolors.

More to come!

TD