I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to pause my “Dreams of Things” series of comic book covers when I hit number 350 in favor of doing another series called “The Acid Ram.” Right now I’m doing both of them so that means I finished one of each this week. Since I just finished “Dreams of Things” number 341 yesterday I thought I’d give it a look.
First of all this one has a bit of my “Side of the brush” inking in it. When I use the brush in my regular way I pull it across the page and make a smooth thick to thin line or a regular even line. On the large figure on this page I dragged the tip of the brush sideways to make a jagged line. It’s something I do when I want a piece to have a different look than my normal way of inking. Often I make the whole cover with the side of the brush technique but in this one it’s only part of the cover.
The first colors that I laid down are the green/blue stripes at the top. For some reason this popped into my head immediately. Often this happens to me. I look at the black and white piece and imagine what the colors might be and then one of colors becomes obvious to me. In this case I wanted it to look like a stripped sky.
After putting the sky in I was left with a bit of a conundrum. The background of the pyramids could also be a sky. I’ve put two skies in a piece before so I could do that again but it didn’t seem to be the right was to go. I decided to go with some yellow and then decided that it wouldn’t be sky but it would be a cloud of dust. I think I also made the line between the sky and dust a little rougher. At first it was smooth. Rough is dustier.
After coloring in the upper area of dust I colored the lower area too. At first I thought about making it another color but then liked the idea of a lot of dust. It would make the whole cover a little dusty. The dreamworlds I draw usually aren’t this dusty.
After the dust was in I added some green in the middle. The little bit of land/mountains behind the main character’s neck came first and then the green boxes in front to the pyramids. The green boxes were colored with grey first and then green on top of them. This gives it a dull green look.
Here I had to pause. I usually color my background pyramids (I use them a lot) a neutral brown but I already had a lot of yellow/brown in the dust. After some contemplation I decided to keep the pyramids brown but keep the browns darker than the dust.
With all that brown on the page I decide to go for even more brown so next I colored the rolling hills on the bottom. I actually have quite a few brown markers so I used some shades that I hadn’t used yet plus a couple I had used already. This might be the most brown I’ve ever used on a cover. But I think it works.
The tiny bit of green on the bottom was an obvious call so I went with it. A few jagged grass covered hills.
I think I did the figure in the background next. Orange hair, pink and light blue face, red and blue shirt. I hadn’t used any red yet and the blues tied in with the sky on top so these choices came fast.
Then I decided to make the eye on the cone thing purple. I scumbled the purple on because wanted a bit of roughness to it. Then I added a little smoothness to it with the green done in short top to bottom lines. Since I made the green behind it dull I knew I could use some bright green here without them visually blending together. Since I made the sky a green/blue I knew that I could use a bright blue for the eye itself. The wavy lines make it look a little bit bloodshot. It gives some worry to the creature.
I saved the main figure for last and colored her head and face next. I used a scumbling technique on her face to match the black line. Some pretty standard stuff. Caucasian skin, magenta head dress, purple/magenta eye piece, and yellow/orange hair. This all went down smooth and easy.
Next came her shirt and I switched marker types for this. The rest of the drawing was done with my dye/alcohol based markers but for the shirt I wanted my pigment/water based markers. I’m not even sure why except that it seemed like a good idea.
The first three Pantone pigment based markers that I bought (before I got the 99 marker set) were a basic red, yellow, and blue. The three primary colors. So now when I think of using the three primaries I think of these three markers. I think that’s what brought me there.
I colored the shirt with the three markers and I made used the color in patterns. Basic stuff. I also used a darker red alcohol marker in places for some variety. I even mixed the red and yellow markers in a couple of spots.
The final thing I did was to add a little more black like into the shirt for some additional texture. All those tiny little shading lines in the shirt weren’t there until the end. They make the vibe of the figure a little bit rougher over all.
So there you have it. Number 341 is done and scanned in. I would say that I only have nine more to go but there could be a few more. A lot of comics, especially big round numbered issues, have more than one cover. I think I made about six different covers to issue number 300. So I might be doing a few extra alternate covers for issue number 350. Only nine to go might mean fifteen. We’ll see when I get there.