Joe Death and the Graven Image publishes THIS month to comic book stores and next month for the book market! I will however, have a decent amount of my own copies to sell and the first place I’ll be doing that is right where I live, Greenville SC. Trying to drum up fans the local yokel population isn’t that easy, but I thought a big poster around town watering holes wouldn’t be a bad idea. Here’s how I made this one.

From a technical standpoint all you really need to know can be seen in these three sketches. I traced one after another making incremental improvements as I went. The metaphysical standpoint, what’s happening in my mind while drawing each stage might be more entertaining:

Blue, the little(big in this context) moth protagonist of Joe Death is becoming to me something like Mickey was to Walt. An icon existing outside of any particular story, one used unsparingly to elicit appeal and direct attention to the particulars of that artists worlds, mine in this case. Anyway, he came first and I built around him as he reads, presumably the book I’m advertising, the book he plays a staring role inside.
Let me beg you to sketch uninhibited by the thought of the end result. Sketch loosely and don’t stop your lines from drawing over other shapes, you’re building the house now, the skeleton is the thing to be concerned with.
I could’ve actually stopped at this stage and something inside me wishes I had.
Final polish, word bubbles added, time to let go and leave it there, resist the undeniable urge to add or change in any way.
Add color(below) try to make it bright and engaging, it is a poster after all. The “delicate” gradients add more to this image than you might think. Subtle, ponder this word.

Alright, if you’re in Greenville, South Carolina, or close to us, come see me at The Commons on March 31, 2023 from 6 pm-9 pm. I’ll have books and prints to sell as well as a physical exhibition of my work, displaying many of the processes used to make the book, a comic and storytelling centric event. See you there.