CAPTAIN AMERICA AND BUCKY 620 previews

Marvel comics and Comic Book Resources each have exclusive black and white preview pages of my art from Captain America and Bucky #620!! Six pages in total.

You can peep at Marvel's exclusive preview pages HERE:

And you can gander at CBR's exclusive preview pages HERE:

My inks over a Gene Colan sketch of Dracula

Gabriel Hardman and Kevin Mellon have recently taken a crack at inking the above pencil sketch of Dracula by the great Gene Colan. After seeing their takes on inking his impressionistic pencils I just couldn't help but try my hand at inking it too. :D

My inks didn't turn out quite like I had expected but it was an interesting exercise just the same.

Doctor Who Vol.2 #3 (variant cover)

I was recently lucky enough to draw an alternate cover for the latest series of Doctor Who comics for IDW featuring my favorite-est of the Doctors, Matt Smith.

Apparently the BBC has a "no knives" policy so the final cover will be slightly different than the one you see above but I figured I'd post the original here for postarity's sake.

Here's the full solicit text:

DOCTOR WHO Vol/ 2 #3

Tony Lee (w) • Richard Piers Rayner (a) • Tommy Lee Edwards, photo (c)

“Ripper’s Curse,” Part 2 of 3: Jack The Ripper has been caught! And even the Doctor has trouble talking his way out of this one! But why is the true Ripper following Amy? What is her connection to Mary Kelly? And how has Rory become the chief of police?

*1 regular cover, 1 photo cover will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio

FC • 32 pages • $3.99 March

ACME Free Comic Book Day: print process

Here are the thumbnail sketches for the print that I mentioned last week for FCBD at Acme Comics.

Next, we have the really rough pencils.

the finished inks...

which would normally be where I'd call it quits, but it was decided early on to add a splash of color on this piece so...
Here are my first few stabs at colors, done with prismacolor markers, as I tried to figure out which bits to color red without it all bleeding together.

For the finished piece be sure to come on out to Acme Comics and pick yourself up a copy of the print!
Have a great weekend, folks.

Viking pinup

This pinup will be in Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein's Viking #2.
Be sure to pick up a copy.
Their first issue hit stands yesterday, and is absolutely wonderful. I can't recommend it enough. It looks like a million bucks, but will only cost you $2.99.

Super Tuesday: MTU #66 Commission

One of my more recent commission was a re-invisioning of Marvel Team-Up #66. Above are the thumbnail sketches.


Here's the pencils


And the finished piece.

Thanks again, Fred

Super Tuesday: Hulk vs Thor Commission- Inks

The lightning took on a life of its own here. Kinda neat though. This was actually the first time I drew Thor in this costume. It will be my last I'm afraid. There are a number costumes out there that are just far too complicated to ever suffer through more than once. This one and the current Iron-Man armor are but a few.

Bat-Monday: Commission Ligne Claire Inks

I thought this looked kind of neat after I erased all the pencil lines so I figured I'd post it here. This one is for any of you out there who might like to see a bit of the process before I put brush to paper.

Devil Slayer: One page's journey...

Just so we don't all get burned out on the daily sketches, here's a little peek behind the curtain a bit with how I go about drawing a comic page.
First I get the script (not shown here) and read though the whole thing twice.  Doing this helps me to get an idea of where we're going with the story.  It also gives me a chance to get a lot of the visuals rattling around in my head.
On the second read through I'll often make little notes to self and crude little stick figures in the margins to refer back to, in case I have a particularly inspired angle or pose, when I start thumbnails.
Now's time to finally put pencil to paper!   Thumbnail sketches are tiny, tiny versions of the comic page drawn to give the editors an idea of where I plan to go with the art. Here's the thumbnail for Devil Slayer#1 page 15 shown a bit larger than actual size.

I try to do thumbnails for an entire issue (generally 22 pages) all on the same day to make sure we have a good flow from page to page.
After the thumbails are approved I rule out my panel borders and go straight to pencils. 

I used to draw full size 11x17 "roughs" in marker that I would then trace on a lightbox.  I ended up cutting out the rough stage altogether since at the end of the day it just ended up eating too much time. Not to mention the fact that by the time a page was completed from thumbnail to inks I had already drawn it FIVE times!
Here's the first draft of the pencils for page 15.  Drawn first with a hard lead and tightened up (but not too much) with a mechanical pencil with a softer lead.

It was decided that the angle in panel 1 wasn't quite working. We needed to have a better look at the main character here, so he was brought up to the foreground in this version.  Bit of a dutch angle too, since things are about to get weird.  If you haven't picked up the issue I won't spoil it for ya:)
After the new version of panel one got the thumbs up I went ahead and finished off the inks for the page.  The inks were done with a Raphael series 8404 size 4 brush, Pentel Color Brush, Faber Castell Pitt Pen sizes B and M for panel borders.  Oh, and a few bits of grease pencil as well. 
And here we have the finished page.

I ended up tweaking a few more things before this got uploaded to the Marvel FTP site, but this is pretty close to the file that was passed along to be colored and lettered.