Process: The Coil Tightens

A couple of weeks ago I posted this variant cover for Henry & Glenn Forever & Ever #2. I thought I'd go over my process for it, including the back and forth between me and the editor/publisher/art director for the book, Tom Neely.

My initial instructions were to depict Henry and Glenn as warriors fighting something. This was both vague and right up my alley! I quickly drew up a couple of thumbnails:

The one on the left was a standard contemporary book cover composition, which is deceptively simple, but hard to pull off. The thumbnail on the right was collaged together. I liked the idea of painting a horse, and it was more action packed. We decided to go with the horse, so I shot some quick reference and began the line drawing:

We work with what we've got.

I was getting close to finishing a tighter line drawing when Tom asked if it was possible to have them fighting a big monster. The giant snake is a great allusion to Conan, so I agreed. It also allowed for a more flexible composition. It was a bummer, however, to not get to paint a cool rearing black stallion. I'll have to save that for another painting.

I really liked the physical story I was able to tell in the snake version. Henry and Glenn are simultaneously saving each other's lives, with Henry holding back the snake's jaws, and Glenn preparing to cut off its tongue. Originally, the plan was to have a textured white background, but Tom wanted something a bit more pulpy and less contemporary, with the characters in genre-specific clothing. I was happy to oblige and, being a child of the 80's, added a Masters of the Universe-esque background and some barbarian/knight attire.

I brought my black and white roughs into color, got the go-ahead to dive in, and started painting in photoshop! Click here to see an animated gif showing the process. With the painting done, all that was left was to add some weathered paperback texture and create a title treatment.

Final, with distress and lettering.

This painting took me a longer time to finish than usual. It took a lot of iterations to nail down some of Henry's key features. One interesting thing about this piece is that it was entirely created digitally, including the sketches and thumbnails. Also, over the course of the last few paintings I've worked on, I've surprised myself at how much I now enjoy drawing and painting things that used to fill me with terror: namely, hands and rocks.