(left,top to bottom) *Randy's prelim layout *Bob's pencils *Actual printed cover art
Usually the client hands me tight pencils or somewhat looser pencils to ink but in this exceptional case I was handed a 9X12 preliminary layout sketch to a cover of CABLE by Randy Green, separate from the actual pencilled board by Randy, to finish. While this means I needed to finish the pencils and then ink it I had the advantage? of having the actual inked comic and cover for reference. So it's not like doing true finished inks since I'm simulating the work that Randy and the uncredited inker performed. Simulating is a good term since I generally copied without the use of a lightbox to 'trace' the final art. I referred to art within the comic to figure out what Marrow's lower right leg would look like under the cover copy. And being that the concept sketch didn't faithfully correspond to what was set for the cover some things don't quite match, like the foreground dagger obscuring the book's title. Rendered in probably similiar degrees of both brush and marker with some zip added along the bottom of the image to simulate the effect used by the cover color artist this job was completed 4/23/03.