Downey Doodles

Traditional inkwash for the Jennifer Wilde #1 variant cover. I ended up redrawing Jennifer’s face, and touching up Oscar’s, digitally for the final cover. 

Finally gave in and signed up for Instragram. On the drawing board today. (Taken with Instagram)

Final image. I do a lot of work here adding details, colour adjustments, graphic design and generally making the image work as a whole. The foreground barbed wire was a last minute addition which really added to the image, and I was able to use it to enhance the ‘environment speed lines’ effect.

You can pick up the comic in a few comic stores around the UK, or order it direct from Atomic Diner:  http://www.atomicdiner.com/products/view/?id=27

Paint in the figures and start converging the colour scheme using adjustment layers (I probably had an layer with the black logo bar turned visible, which is why you can see a colour difference cutting across the bottom environment). 

I work with textures, PS brushes, shapes and linework to start detailing the backdrop and lower scene.

I draw in a temporary figure and work out where everything will go on the properly proportioned canvas. 

I’m using the shape of both environments to act as natural ‘speed lines’, so it looks like most of the action bursts subtly from the Black Scorpion figure. I draw in a guide for this that you can see as straight blue lines and use them to roughly lay out the cards, chip and the general figure. 

Black Scorpion launches at the MCM London this weekend, so I thought I’d resurrect Downey Doodles to show my process digitally painting the cover. 

I start with a thumbnail doodle as usual. This was the first cover I’ve made entirely digital every step of the way, so these are photoshop brush lines. 

A few reviewers have picked up my graveyard layout experiment in Jennifer Wilde #1. Here’s the inks and tones for the page being referenced. Scroll down for pencils and initial layout. 

Pencils. The initial layout had the cross shaped panels border much too big of course, so resized here.