Cover/Poster art. How I go about it.

I thought I'd share more stuff regarding how I go from a sketch to a finished piece. Because it's fun for me. Here's a cover I've devised. It may not actually be used as a cover, but rather turned into a poster or postcard. We'll see.


This is the final inked drawing, fresh and lovely, with no retouching done at all. I would like to show the very, very first sketch I did of this idea, but I can't seem to find it. In any case, it looked almost just like this. It was one of those rare instances where I knew exactly what I wanted.
As you can see, I laid this out fully intending to put a title at the top from the beginning. I don't really like the idea of putting text over the artwork and having it compete and interfere, so I always separate it. I just think it looks nicer, and its less for me to fret about. From here I begin by adjusting my levels and...


I initially intended this piece to have the same thick, painty feel as the picture of Elios below, so I did my initial color sketches in Corel. I already had an idea for the title art, so you can see I knocked it out first. Eventually, I decided that I wanted this piece to have a more photographic feel. I wanted something that looked a little closer to home for some people, and I really wanted to showcase mood more than style and texture. So I, while keeping this brainstorming in mind, I reloaded the original document into Photoshop and...


Now we're getting somewhere. All in all, this is about 12 hours of work, including the time to draw and ink the original piece. It's still not finished, but I'm having alot of fund putting unique textures on things. The bike really is starting to look like a true hunk of crap, which is great. The color scheme for it, I'll admit, I did steal. The blue in the body and yellow in the tire are meant to be reminiscent of Tetsuo's bike in the Akira animated film. Dork, I know.

Til next time,
~Neal