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