Cover Replica: Batman Adventures - Mad Love

Batman Adventures: Mad Love

Here's the original "Mad Love" cover by Bruce Timm.

* * *

And here is here's the cover replica for my pal (and Superman's), Jim, from Jimmy Jams Comics and Games here in Winona, MN and La Crosse, WI.

Once again, these things seem to take forever.

* * *

STEP ONE:  I cut a 20" x 30" piece of hardboard, and then glued a 22" x 30" sheet of Stonehenge (#140) paper using acrylic medium, and trimmed the excess paper after it dried.  I then used a mixture of gesso and acrylic medium to paint over top of the Stonehenge paper to prep it for painting.  When that was done, I drew a 1" x 1" grid and set to pencilling the cover image.  For the pencils, I used a blue lead .07 mechanical pencil to keep the lead from smearing too much.

* * *

STEP TWO:  Once the pencils were done, I began to paint the large areas with acrylic paint.  The straight lines were done with a Sharpie marker and a ruler, while the other line work was done with a mixture of acrylic black paint and waterproof, acrylic black ink and painted on with a round brush.

* * *

STEP THREE:  Here is about the halfway point with the colors using acrylic paint.  I did some drybrushing for the shading and highlights to give it more of the feel of the original marker coloring.

* * *

STEP FOUR:  And here is the finished piece.  As usual, my camera didn't do the best job, and since it is so large, lighting it uniformly is problematic.  Sigh.

I did cheat a little bit by painting the cards with a darker blue, solid color, rather than trying to replicate the 50% screen effect.  I did try to use a Sharpie marker to recreate the screen, but it just didn't look right, so just went with the solid color, instead.  I guess I could have just used my printer and glued it onto the drawing, but that just doesn't feel right to me.  Ah, well.

* * *

This was done with acrylic paint on 20" x 30" gessoed Stonehenge paper glued to hardboard.

.