So, I have been working on another pitch for a graphic novel that is under the working title of The King's Game. I thought it would be fun to share with you all the first completed page and show you how I did it. Let's start with the original image:
This was my first concept of what the page would look like. I had the idea of it being a small coliseum with a water pit and you wouldn't see any of the creatures in the water until later when our hero's ended up in it. The image was useful for the the intimacy of the event, but eventually I thought (and with other great input from friends and artists) it needed to be more epic feeling. I then got the idea of putting the whole thing out on an open ocean with a coliseum built on the edge of a rock face which lead to this:
These are my original pencils for the page. I do this all on 8.5 paper. It helps me see the scope of everything in a smaller way. I get lost on a larger format. I take these loose scribblings and scan them into the computer.
As you may have seen in an earlier post on my Bounty Hunter drawing, I then convert these lines to red line art in PS using a fill layer and set the layer to Screen. This will turn all of my lines into the shade of red I want. From there I print this out on two pieces of bristol card stock and tap the pages together so I can do the inks. I stick to this format for now because its what my printer handles with ease and I don't think it hurts the final product.
After I've inked the whole thing I scan it into PS and removed the red line art using the Hue/Saturation tool. Then I do some clean ups using a soft white airbrush set to color dodge nd the opacity turned down to 14. This lets me pick up small artifacts that remain after the red has been pulled out and holds up the darker intended lines.
The next step is to Flat the page. This is basically breaking down all of the shapes into layer groups for easy selection. I can then paint freely on one object without fear of it impacting the others around it.
Even more important than color in a painting is the values of the colors. These help things recede and push forward. You can use temperatures to do this as well, but value that works well can create just as stunning of an image as one with vibrant color. Even more so if the artist has no sense of values. So what I've done is started using a fill layer set to a middle gray tone and the layer set to color. I put this on top of everything and will constantly toggle back to it as a way of checking if things are separating like they should and if my focal point is working correctly. I caught a lot of stuff this way.
And finally:
I complete the painting. This thing kicked my butt. I pushed myself hard on this and I think the result is better than I imagined. Its got me excited for the rest of the scene coming up and with this image in place, I'm set to start painting the rest of the scene.
A few months back, Tom Dell'Aringa of the webcomic, Marooned, asked if I would be willing to contribute a piece for the art gallery in his first book. Being a fan of Tom's I obviously said yes! I had a lot of fun working this piece and learned a lot as well. If you haven't checked out Tom's comic... Go do it already! It's a fun story and it's awesome to see how far Tom's work has progressed since he first began.
