Green... and lots of it. My most feared color... the one I avoid like the plague. For this variant cover I was pretty much forced to deal with green and knock it around like a red-headed stepchild. See, normally, green is the bully, at least that's how I view the color. It tends to push me around in the piece, and force me into color schemes I don't really naturally gravitate towards. It tells you to add more yellow, a bit of purple, and makes throwing red in there a bitch and a half. Due to the fact that red and green are compliments, the combination of the two tends to produce and image where both colors fight each other for attention unless the piece is extremely simple. In this particular case, I started out with much more red in the sky and had to continually mix more purple into to get that green to jump forward. Anyway, enough boring color talk.
It's this simple: I had never done a Green Lantern piece before. I've done a couple of covers for DC lately where I branched out a bit in terms of the characters and tried some new things color-wise. To be honest, I never read Green Lantern as a kid, so a lot of wikepedia was involved here. Guy Gardner I was already familiar with, but from waaay back in the Justice League days. Funny, a LOT can change in continuity in twenty years ,) Look for this cover as the variant to Emerald Warriors #1.
Lee, your sense of color is really excellent. I would trust it. I would never doubt it. As prolific and experienced you are, you have developed a good compositional instinct. It always captures the mood perfectly. Your style is very discernible. However, I am not without my criticisms. Killowog's pose is awesome. It is very well characterized. Guy's face is a little unnerving due to how is is placed as an element, when you consider it as the entire composition. The face is large and intense, and it draws the eye, but it draws the eye in a jarring way. The proportion is really unnerving, as well as the contrast and the intensity of the face. Guy should be the star of the scene, but not in a way that distracts from the other elements in the picture. I would suggest drawing him in a 3/4 way like Kilowog. Anyway, I enjoy your work all the time, I just felt some compositional elements felt a little intense.
ReplyDeleteWow I just see this as a really cool cover for comic book fans! Great strong imagery and I love the lighting in this piece! It almost looks like an oil painting! is this done in Coral painter? Once again great work!
ReplyDeleteWow, so amazing. I really wish this was the standard cover instead of the variant though. Great work!
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