For the front cover of Metal Between Two Faces #2, I felt a shift in emphasis from previous cover paintings could perhaps give a more pleasing result.
My last two covers have effectively bypassed any logical comic book rules by avoiding the portrayal of any main characters and giving very little impression of what to expect within. Whilst taking such an approach gives me an enormous amount of self serving, awkwardly artistic pleasure; that empty look of disinterest on the faces of comic buyer's as they move on to the next stall; never to know the wonders they missed, my intentions with MBTF is to tell a story, rather than immediately warp readers' minds with savage abstractions. So, there's no shame in putting your main character on the cover. This is exactly the kind of creative quandary of astuteness a Fine Art degree and too many Dave Mckean interviews puts you in.
So...to start..
Initial sketches (middle row, right column was drawn by my wife, she insisted I should have her favourite character against a bright yellow background, surrounded by mathematical symbols. I declined, politely. Maybe next time.)
Initial areas of interest
Whilst I can thoroughly enjoy the work of other artists when in consumer mode, I tend to steer clear of anything with a hint of similarity when knee deep in the act of creation. However, when it comes to colour scheming, I will sometimes gather a few images together to spark that dampened, grey cell into something a tad more saturated.
My main thinking with the Tintin covers, is that you're witnessing your main man in situ, in the midst of danger and adventure. Now, in this issue, I'm still building up to peril and perversity, so some form of character piece less about action and more about mood and setting could be explored.
Taiyō Matsumoto's Tekkonkinkreet is essentially just on my mind since reading it, stuck fast on my mind. It's all about, well many things; one being 'ownership' of a city; the evolving face of a sprawl and how it's denizens manipulate/are digested in-it's progress. I like that kind of thing.
Venus Wars covers are all total boyz toyz, peddle to the metal and other variations thereof - There's a sense of anticipation, you can hear the clanking of industrial machinery, the throbbing of engines, the chug chug guitars and all that jazz.
So where do we go from here...
We go here, that's where...
Went through the usual stages with this painting; initial pleasure at undertaking a new piece, slivers of self doubt, tormented agony, self loathing, threatening to start over from scratch, slightly comforted, close to confident, relatively cheerful, placated.
The final image still looks a bit tame to me, I could perhaps, have gone in and added more grime, shadows and detail. However, I set myself a limit of one weekend to paint this bad boy and considering the week I spent pissing about with the last cover, I'm happy with final outcome. The intention was to create a clearly defined, bright, eye catching design that sets itself apart from the somewhat murky previous paintings and boldly states its business - 'hey, it's a kid on a car, really high up doing nothing much, what you gonna do about it hu?' That kind of thing.
pencil/ink/watercolour if anyone was wondering.
