“Demonstrating the Craft,” Comic Covers with E.M. Gist

This past week marked the release of a new online specialty course, “Painted Comic Covers,” with Watts Atelier Instructor and illustrator E.M. Gist.  On this week’s installment of “Demonstrating the Craft, we take a brief look at the course and at Gist’s process through screenshots of the video lessons themselves.

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Erik’s process starts where all artists’ visual ideas begin: In the sketchbook. While exploring compositional thumbnail sketches, Erik will focus on simplified values and the overall immediate graphic read of the image. The first idea an artist has for a composition isn’t always the best; with this in mind, Erik focuses on the quantity of thumbnail sketches he produces, hoping to find an interesting composition as he explores the options available to him.

 

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Once an interesting and exciting composition is found, Erik will move on to planning the image’s color. Sometimes Erik will have a color scheme in mind right away (or it may even be dictated in the art brief itself). Most times however, Erik explores color options through three or four rough color comps.

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With his composition and color scheme now selected, Erik can move on to the details of the piece.  Erik’s tonal comps are essentially the “tight drawing” for his painting.  While he already has an idea of the value structure (from both his thumbnails and his color comps), it’s here where he really beings to iron out the piece’s value hierarchy.

Screen Shot 2014-07-14 at 5.00.39 PM   With the prep work done, Erik can now focus on the painting itself.  Erik lays in his underpainting transparently, blocking in large shapes with local color, to prep the piece for the opaque “detail work” that follows.

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Once the underpainting is blocked in, Erik will move on to thicker, more opaque painting techniques to finish the piece off.  Working from large shapes to small details, Erik will bring the piece up to a finish as a whole.

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The result of all this planning and prep work is a strong, dynamic cover image.  We hope you enjoyed this brief look at this exciting new course. To see the course in it’s entirety and watch Erik complete and explain the thought process behind this piece (From the start of the thumbnails to the final brushstroke on the finish) be sure to enroll in our Drawing, Painting, and Specialty program.  To enroll, visit our membership page here.

Join us again next week on “Demonstrating the Craft,” where we will be blogging directly from the upcoming Watts Atelier Illustration Boot Camp.  See you all then!

-The Watts Atelier Team