Brightest Day covers

[Scott Williams]

This was a pretty fun cover. Lots of fat brush renderings on the big guy, and a bit thinner pen line on the Martian Manhunter. Inking Dave is a little bit like when I inked Whilce Portacio back in the day because of dramatic lighting that both these guys are so good at. They both understand form very well and I have to make sure that blacks (shadows) are spot on. The blacks also add drama, and when it comes to art, I'm all about the drama!

This is just about all brush. It was also the cover that had me thinking that doing finesse brush work over Dave is maybe not the way to go. He pencils so dark that for me to erase his markings properly pulls up SO much ink, leaving ghostly ink renderings (not a problem when using the pen). The ink I use (straight Rapidograph Ultradraw 3085-F) is fine for everyone else, but Finch is a beast with the graphite!

Pretty simple cover (simple is good!), but the wings were a bit of challenge from a patience standpoint.

Earth Day

[Oliver]

Hey ya'lls, in honor of Earth Day coming up tomorrow...(and Avatar on DVD!), I wanted to post this 'Avatar' piece I did.

I luv, luved the film and had a ton of fun with this piece. I also colored it and Livio added some of the cool background effects.

The character isn't necessarily anyone from the film in particular but was very much inspired by Neytiri.

Hope you like;)

American Vampire Pencils & My C2E2 Schedule

[jimlee]

Pencils I did for Vertigo book called American Vampire. Scanned the pencils into Photoshop then overlayed with watercolor paper texture and then did some digital coloring and painting work on it.

CHICAGO debut of C2E2 show

FRIDAY, 4/16
2:30-3:30pm: SIGNING - DC booth (#630)
4:45-5:45pm: PANEL – DC NATION (room E451)

SATURDAY, 4/17
2:00-3:00pm: SIGNING - DC booth (#630)
3:15-4:15pm: PANEL – DC UNIVERSE (room E451)*
4:15-5:15pm: PANEL – WILDSTORM (room E351)*

SUNDAY, 4/18
11:15am-12:15pm: PANEL – DC TOWN MEETING (room E351)
12:30-1:30pm: SIGNING - DC booth (#630)

*in audience more than likely than on stage as these are to spotlight creators working on the various title

Simon Dark

[Oliver]

Hey ya'lls, here's a piece I did of Simon Dark for fun...(and for sale;) As you know I'm really attracted and luv to draw the darker characters like Death and Joker, and wanted to do a Simon piece for a little while...(it was on my ever-growing 'To Do' stack).

Anyhoo, I'll be at the Wizard World Anaheim show this weekend and if you are there, you can come see it in person!

Hope you like and see ya at the show!

Wonder Woman

[jimlee]

Sending a Wonder Woman sketch in stages done on my iPad

Done using sketchbook pro using my fingers-here I'm just blocking out colors and features

Now adding some values and colors using the airbrush tool which gives me color grads I can sample later

Adding more color and defining structure playing between line drawing and painting

Between literal and impressionistic; I like seeing strokes of paint. App replicates that aspect of painting well

Now I'm tightening up details zooming in around the eyes using a brush tool and sampling existing colors

Defining values more esp around neck and nose. Eyes are incongruous need to fix

Luckily they have a smudge smear tool that works like liquify in photoshop. Added blue underlighting, tiara effects

Adding hair as framing device makes all the difference. Chin still has value issues. Got to push the neck bk more.

Running out on my hour self-imposed time limit. Quick background done in to frame composition and use light to draw eyes attn

Finished piece. Took 80 mins. Added blue bk into neck, eyes fixed but still a bit off. Always tough drawing symmetrically. Added waves to hair.

Finally, here's my Boston Comic Con schedule for this weekend:

Saturday
11-1pm Signing
3pm - 5pm Signing

Sunday
10:30am - 11:30am Jim Lee Panel
1 - 3pm Signing

Decepticons

[Livio]

With this painting, I was trying to go for a more monochromatic look, with mainly a bleached-out atmosphere and only bits of color here and there. I've found that putting a lot of the classic looking Transformers in the same shot with their natural colors can sometimes look pretty garish, and fight whatever sort of "realism" you're trying to go for.

Studiomate JJ has been doing some great "big team shot" commissions of The Avengers and JLA lately, and I suppose I was influenced a bit by him here. It was fun to play with scale and have massive characters in the same shot as smaller ones.

See you next time!

-Livio

Brightest Day 1 cover

[Scott]

Cover for Brightest Day # 1 by the incomparable Dave Finch. What's funny is, he didn't really seem to be happy with the drawing--too static and posed I think he said.

I thought it looked great. I wasn't too thrilled with my inks--I thought they were kind of slick and standard, in that I didn't really take any chances or experiment on it--but Dave loved it!

So there you go. Everyone is their own harshest critic. That's probably a GOOD thing.