Cover Replica: Batman - Harley Quinn #1

Harley Quinn #1

Here's the original "Batman - Harley Quinn #1" cover by Alex Ross.

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

It's been a while since I did one of these replicas... or, is it more accurate to call it a forgery?  Well, I guess I can kinda-sorta justify it as one of those "Master Reproductions", except with Alex Ross cover painting in this case rather than a Da Vinci or Michelangelo.  I also cheated a little bit and enlarged the figures of the painting and left off the logo (I still **HATE** lettering).

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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 prepped, I drew a 1" x 1" grid and set to penciling the cover image.  For the pencils, I used a blue lead .07 mechanical pencil to keep the lead from smearing too much.

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STEP TWO:  Here's the first pass with the acrylic paints.  I decided to go more with slightly more colorful version of Harley Quinn, rather than just black/gray and red.

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STEP THREE:  And here is the finished piece--after another 2-to-50 more passes.  I will admit it is a little bit weird and tricky trying to mimic a watercolor/gouache painting with acrylics.  As usual, my camera didn't do the best job; since the painting is so large it is a bit difficult to get the lighting to be uniform from top-to-bottom without sacrificing detailed shading.  In this case, I did the best to split the difference.  Oh, well...

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

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Cover Replica: Batman Adventures - Mad Love

Batman Adventures: Mad Love

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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Harley Quinn (Colorized)

Harley Quinn

And here's the Colorized version.

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The first box just shows the flat colors done with a MULTIPLY Layer.  The next step shows some of the variation in the lights and darks on the same layer; I also put some texture and lettering on the hammer.  And in the last step pictured, I pushed the final highlights on a NEW Layer; I dropped the opacity of the lettering to 45% and went in with the Eraser Tool to make it seem like the lettering was a bit faded from over-use.  Finally, I thought it needed a little more focus, so I used a large air brush tool to darken the background around Harley Quinn as seen in the final picture above.

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Here is something a little bit different: an animated .gif of each step in the process from beginning to end.  It's sort of a larger file (1.4MB), so it may take a bit longer to load depending on your internet connection.

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This was done with charcoal on 11" x 14" toned Strathmore drawing paper, then imported into PhotoShop.

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Harley Quinn (Black and White)

Harley Quinn

I noticed my Blog was quickly becoming nothing but art for my posts to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Redux Blog.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course--it's a great Blog and lots of fun to work on.  But, I think I've been getting a bit lazy and decided I need to change things up a bit.  And, with that, I thought it would be fun to do some character studies.  In this case, it's a drawing of Harley Quinn.  I will probably do up a colorized version in the next day or two.

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STEP ONE:  I used soft, vine charcoal to loosely sketch the pose on a sheet of 11" x 14" Strathmore toned paper.  I like working on a toned surface as it gives three values for the price of two (the mid-toned paper, plus black charcoal and white chalk), as opposed to just the two values of black charcoal on white paper.

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STEP TWO:  I smear the charcoal to soften the lines and push it into general shaded areas.

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STEP THREE:  I used charcoal and carbon pencils to build up shading and a kneaded eraser to carve back out some highlights.

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STEP FOUR:  Here is the finished charcoal drawing.  I also didn't care for the angle of the right-foot in the original drawing and changed it.

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STEP FIVE:  I went in an added some highlights with a white charcoal pencil.  I then took this picture and opened it in PhotoShop to clean it up a bit and use it as a framework to continue the drawing/painting digitally.

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STEP SIX:  In PhotoShop, I darkened and smoothed out the shading, bumped up the highlights more, and also changed the expression on her face, as well as corrected a few other odd-and-ends.  I thought I'd leave this one as black-and-white for now, and do a colorized version in a couple days.  :-)

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This was done with charcoal on 11" x 14" toned Strathmore drawing paper, then imported into PhotoShop.

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Harley Quinn & The Joker

This is my submission to the SuperPunch Blog, which I visit regularly.  They are having a contest to create a mock-up of a movie poster based on a DC character and win a DC Chess Set, so here it is.

 

Here's the process:

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STEP ONE:  As usual, I used a mixture of gesso and size (glue) to prime a 10" x 15" Crescent Illustration Board (#215).  I then drew out the image with a blue pencil, as it seems to smear a little less when I'm working with it.  I didn't have a reference for Harley Quinn at the time I sketched it, so the head dress is a little off character.  I also didn't bother to use picture references for the painting, either, so I suppose that is fitting.  I also wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with Harley Quinn's hand, so I left that sort of vague at that moment.

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STEP TWO:  I did some black-and-white wash underpainting, trying to determine some vague modeling for the figure.  For complaining about the concept of underpainting in some previous posts, I sure seem to use it a lot.  Anyway, I then started laying some acrylic color over top the black-and-white washes.  Also, I didn't feel the Joker's eyes were quite "crazy" enough in the pencil drawing, so I tried to correct that a bit.  And I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with Harley's other hand not holding the giant hammer.

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STEP THREE:  Here's the finished painting.  When I took the picture, there was a bit of glare on large chunks of the background of the painting from the lighting (you can sort of see it in the previous picture in STEP TWO).  So, I decided to use the Dodge-and-Burn tool in PhotoShop to darken and burn-out highlights for the background, rather than just use the paintbrush to give it a single color.  That seemed to work.  And, I **FINALLY** decided to give Harley Quinn one of those guns with a "Bang!" flag in it.  It seemed in character.

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STEP FOUR:  I added the lettering in PhotoShop for the faux poster and submitted it to SuperPunch.

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Speaking of the SuperPunch Blog, I was in one of their Illustration Roundups for February 21, 2012 with my "Watchmen: The Squid" cover.  It was very surreal seeing my stuff on someone else's blog (with credit AND a link to my blog--that's especially nice).  Especially as it is a blog I read every week or so and I wasn't expecting it at all...  Cool!

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This was done with acrylic paint on 10" x 15" gessoed Crescent Illustration Board

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