Batman, Batgirl and Robin

Step by step, from layout to final inks:

Batman #703 variant cover art

DC is doing several alternate covers for their 75th Anniversary and here's my contribution; a reworking of Sheldon Moldoff's iconic cover for Batman #112, from 1957. The zip screen in the background will probably create a bit of a moiré pattern on your monitor at the smaller size so be sure to enlarge the final image to full size.

Batman and Robin ink preview

Here's the inked version of the piece I showed several weeks ago:

Batman and Robin pencil preview

I'm afraid I can't tell you what this is for. Be patient and I promise I'll show the whole picture as well as sketches, inks, etc., as soon as I can.  

Batman family 11 x 17" drawing

Batman family pencil drawing: 2001

Batman family pin-up

I'm not sure of the date on this one but it's at least a couple of years old. I didn't like my first take on the Robin figure so I made him larger and quite a bit younger.

Legends of the DC Universe #6, page 8

Once again, Dave Taylor layouts and my finishes.  This page was a bit more finished than some of the others but by now I was on a roll.  By the way, the Superman face in the last panel was swiped cold by another artist.  I don't think I would have noticed but the other artist's editor called me up to apologize so I compared the two.  Oh well, it happens...

Legends of the DC Universe #6, page 22

The last page from this story.  Dave Taylor did layouts and I finished the art.  I did the color guides as well which really made me happy.

Teen Titans

I think we all knew I'd have to do a finished version of this old, rejected card sketch... didn't we?  I'm so predictable.

Teen Titans pin-up

This was originally a commission for my buddy Robert Jewell.  Later, it was published in TwoMorrows' Titans Companion.

Batman & Catwoman pin-up color guide

This is a follow-up to an older post that you can see here.  I did a very detailed color guide and Lovern Kindzierski created the seps.  Guides like this were rarely returned to the artists. They were either discarded, filed away or snatched up by people in the office who liked them.  Fortunately, I went to the trouble of making a color copy of this one. As you can see, I went a little crazy with the notations.

Legends of the DC Universe #6, page 4

I wrote about the odd situation leading up to this story back here. Looks like I missed at least one solid black that was supposed to be filled in.  Hope the colorist caught it.

Legends of the DC Universe #6, page 10

So here's the story on this one:  I was eating breakfast one morning back in 1998 and, inexplicably, my eight-year-old daughter started to ask me about work.  I played along and told her about this job.  "DC just sent me a story to ink, but I'm probably going to send it back."  "Why?"  "Well, the layouts aren't really finished enough to ink, I'd have to spend a lot of time finishing the pencils before I could ink them." She took this all in, thought about it for a bit, then said, "I think you should do it".

Needless to say, I was a little surprised to get unsolicited career advice from an eight-year-old, but I took it to heart.  I called the editor, Scott Peterson, and he agreed to send the layouts back to Dave Taylor for a little more refining.  Dave and I talked about what specifically was needed and he explained that he didn't have any experience working this way and wasn't really clear on what exactly constituted a "layout".  He was also in the middle of another job and didn't have time to do much more than a little touch-up here and there.

Okay. Well, I tried.

Dave's a terrific storyteller and most of his compositions are still intact but other than that, there's not much of his work left on the pages.

Don't try this at home

You know, this is putting an awful burden on someone who just draws stuff with little thought of who – if anyone – might see it or even if it's worth being looked at more than once.

My first reaction was, "No, if I'd known you were going to do that I'd have done a better drawing!"

The artist did a nice job though... I like the addition of the Bat Signal. If anything, I think he improved the drawing.