Alright y’all, this isn’t what you think, I’m not redrawing Joe Death and the Graven Image again. It’s done for good. BUT I do want to make some covers for each of the six chapters inside :) This is as much for my website portfolio as it is for anything else. My portfolio here has always been a collection of random projects and I’d like it to represent a focus more on comics and covers. So here we go.

As I begin writing the second story for Joe it’s been helpful to revisit Graven Image to remind myself just what the hell happened in it. It was an ambitious book, spinning out quite the cast of characters, places, and ideas that weren’t explicitly spelled out for the reader. Implication, I thought at the time, was the way to tell the story. I still think so for many things, but simply by progressing in the story, I’ll need to get clearer and more specific about a lot of things. Covers are interesting because they're visual synopses of what’s inside the book/comic. The elements, characters, places, and objects are explicit, while their arrangement implies their relationship to each other and importance in the narrative.

I drew just about every element(character, background, object) separately in my sketchbook and then collaged them together in Photoshop. The sketches below for example. And if you’re paying close attention to the style of my work you may notice I’m trying my hand at softly modeling, or shading my figures instead of relying solely on line and flat color. Trying to add some depth to my toolbelt.

Thanks for the reading and comments last week! Looks like this is going to be a Monday thing for me. So, see you next week!