While it’s always a pleasure to see the finished product, one of the most fascinating elements about any given comic book page is being able to see how it is constructed from the bottom up, and the same goes for covers – usually to twice the extent. Intense labors of love designed to grab your eyes in the shop and convince you to purchase the item sight unseen, covers are an incredibly vital and important part to the comic experience.
With that in mind, JH Williams III gave us permission to share the cover process for the first three issues of Batwoman (originally posted on his blog) with the MC audience so you can see some of his process in action (and get more excited for the upcoming Batwoman series, in case you somehow weren’t excited already).
Check after the cut to see the art process for the first three Batwoman covers, and if you haven’t pre-ordered the first issue already you might want to call our LCBS quickly.
Rough sketch for editorial approval.
Black and white version, done with ink and copic greytones, and a little ink wash. Then some touch-ups with black color pencil and white color pencil.
Color version using photoshop. Since I wanted the ghostly image of the new Villain to be a part of the physical artwork I had to carefully separate that digitally before coloring the piece. I felt this was necessary to better mix the elements afterward using various fx. Also I made a compositional change by adding another fish skeleton, using one of the ones I had already drawn through selection and duplication tools. This really improved the compositional balance. I also made a slight digital change to the cape near Batwoman’s face. This was important to do because the color of the untouched version looked a little awkward. I also smoothed the textures on her skin so it would have a different feel than the wash tones elsewhere. I also added some green mist to enhance the ghostly otherworldly quality of the villain’s presence to finish it off.
Original version done using Zig millennium pens, ink brush work, Copic greytones, Holbein gouache paints.
Then that was scanned into photoshop for digital color of the black and white portions. This was a purposeful choice because I wanted for the two sections of art to have drastically different looks. One style above the water line and another below. This helped add to the surreal unnerving quality of the image.
Then final text and logo placement.
Here is the rough sketch done for editorial approval.
Here’s the black and white version. You can see quite few elements were added or altered based on the sketched rough above.
Now the colored version by me, using photoshop. At this stage I had planned on adding that zigzag design motif that is indicated in the rough sketch. But after seeing it this far along, it just seemed wiser to keep the design a little more simple. I’ve been feeling that way about most of the new covers for the series so far. I’m not sure if has to do with the psychology of them, being more on the horror side. But it just feels right to leave off some of the flourishes I tend to do, this time around.
And here is the logo. This was a bit tough to figure out properly because I didn’t want it to be intrusive, but it needed to stand out too, graphically. And there were some space limitations to contend with as well.
