This is my 1st commission for client Scott & his wife and my 1st Nightcrawler but it’s my 6th job with Craig. Craig encouraged me to take it and make it my own. First, I extended the bricks down to the lower right outside the blueline border. Then I inked the figure and props with markers and brush. I added a lightsource & shadows (with black, lines and later a rub-on Instantex dot zip over the bricks). I then used a Pitt brush marker to add a thick outline to the shape of the ‘bamf’ cloud effect. I subsequently covered the art with a frisket sheet and cut out the cloud shape and then used a toothbrush to spatter black ink in the direction from the outside in all around. Then I added directional white paint spatter by tapping the brush up against an object (in this case I used a quill holder). To this effect the last things I did was add black ink finger smudges to the edges and then used an X-acto blade to scrape into it.
Lastly I used a decorative border zip to the sketchy texture drawn on the cross. This 11X17 image on 2-ply board was completed on 8/2/2006. UPDATE: on 12/19/2006 Craig passed onto me the color file of the piece by Chris Summers of Inkblotz Studios who helped color Craig’s (& Todd’s) PERHAPANAUTS series for Dark Horse Comics. He simply did it for fun which is funny since I’d been planning on coloring it as well. It looked GREAT! I contacted Chris and asked if I could use a hi-res version of it for prints and my cover of “Bob Almond Inkworks” #3 and he agreed. He recolored the work on 12/27/2006. Thanks a bunch, Chris! It looks wundabar!