My second Michael Finn “One Minute Later” commission theme (the first one was this: http://almondink.com/bobarchive/gallery/ff52.html), where artists re-interpret a classic cover image by rendering what happens to the characters ‘one minute later’, I was recommended by premier client Damon Owens and art rep Bob Shaw to Michael to give me another shot and he threw me quite an initiation piece! This time it’s a OML for the cover of Incredible Hulk#181 with the first full (and cover) appearance of Wolverine by Herb Trimpe from 1974. While it’s my second Stephen Segovia job, it surely ranks among the most intricate and time-consuming pieces I’ve ever inked! I worked on it in bits while I was doing other stuff in the course of a week so I don’t know how long it exactly took me but it was at least 2 days. When I first saw the file I thought it was tonal until I enlarged it and saw all of the tiny lines to render the grey areas. So I simulated that but Stephen sometimes had black areas darker than other black areas so I used some greywash to differentiate areas and to add depth. The only spot I wish I’d done in greywash is the darkened tree bark breaking the border at the top of the page instead of solid black since it’s farther away and it’s too strong as is dimensionally with everything else. This is my 9th Hulk commission and my, what, only third Wolverine commission?! Seems like I’d done more but I can only find some in my archived gallery’s first couple of pages. (Damon?) Definitely, it’s my first Wendigo (did you catch him?) I used all of my normal inking tools on this 11X17 image rendered as blueline on 2-ply Joe Kubert board. It was completed on 1/9/11, a grand start to the new year and blooming relationship.
UPDATE: On June 4, 2015 I commissioned Liezl Buenaventura to color the image for use as a print.

Michael Finn’s CAF gallery: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=9834)

Liezl Buenaventura at Serendipity Art Sales: http://www.serendipityartsales.net/Liezl_Index.html