
This is the cover to Mythos: Ghost Rider that actually saw print. It's painted in Acryla Gouache on 16" x 24" masonite. The first one that I painted got solicited, but I just wasn't happy with it... so I painted a new one. What follows is all the steps I went through to paint the one that I eventually canned.

This was the original cover and is painted (like the rest of the book) on 8.5" x 12" bristol board. It was going to be my first finished piece in full-color Acryla Gouache. I donated the original artwork to the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, which has displayed it on several occasions. While it's passable as a cover, I wasn't happy with the color of the piece or the gesture of the figure.

In order to get a better handle on my new medium, I did a small color study over a 4" x 6" print of the finished pencils. I continued to do this for a few more pages, but each became less finished until I stopped doing them altogether. While a great help in honing in on the the right color, the studies simply took too long and I began painting right on top of my digital color studies to match the color.

This is the finished pencil drawing. I think it's where I killed the gesture I had previously achieved in my layout sketch, pictured below. This is often a problem for me as I try to "correct" a loose sketch by tightening up perspective, proportion, and stray marks.

The aforementioned digital color study...

... and the layout sketch. In the second version of the painting, I tried to capture this gesture again with a small degree of success. By that time, I had finished the entire book and had enough experience to handle the paint in a confident manner. The differences between the covers are not great, but subtlety is not subtle at all when dealing with human perception. The smallest physical change can make a huge psychological impact. Of course, I probably spend too much time and brian power worrying about this kind of thing.

Before I go, here's a bonus image from a very long time ago... back when I was dreaming of the series as a whole and charting out the overall look. It was a very quick sketch done entirely in Photoshop.
This Wednesday: the first ever Wacky Reference Wednesday