I did my first commission recreation art in 2001 and recently I have explored that practice once again. Since I have photocopies of everything I ever worked on I can tap into any art to reproduce over lightbox onto board. I won’t reproduce and artist’s work without their blessing and, in these cases, I had Sal’s. I also limit myself to exclusive recreations, one of each, so as to not diminish the special nature and value of the ‘original’ printed art. The recreations are also clearly labeled so as to limit fraudulent claims in the market. As Recreations, I try to stay as faithful as possible to the original work; in the case of the original cover of BP # 35, I’d initially added cracks to the pavement under the Hulk but either I changed my mind at the last minute or Sal asked me not to keep it.

So it wasn’t printed but there it was in my photocopy of the original cover which was printed up by me just before I covered up that detail in black so, in this case, I decided to add it to the recreation as a distinctive variation. For the cover of BP # 30, Sal originally inked his own pencils so this was a first-timer for me. I also enlarged the image 10-12% to better show off the art within the space and adding the title filled the remaining, blank space well. For the cover of BP # 41 (probably the last recreation I’ll be able to do for a while) I not only enlarged the image to better
fit the space but I obviously added black to the background to make the figures and panther symbol much more pronounced. Personally, I think it’s the superior image of the two.

 

ALL ART BELOW ORIGINALLY PENCILLED BY SAL VELLUTO

 

 

Original art splash from BLOODSHOT v2 #16, page 4, 1998	Commissioned recreation, 2001	Original cover art from BLACK PANTHER v3 #45, 2002	Cover recreation, 7/28/03
Original cover art from BLACK PANTHER v3 #30, 2001	Cover recreation, 8/19/03	Original cover art from BLACK PANTHER v3 #35, 2001	Cover recreation, 8/5/03
Original cover art from BLACK PANTHER v3 #41, 2002	Cover recreation, 5/10/04	Original cover art from BLACK PANTHER v3 #26, 2000	Cover recreation, 5/10/04