Poseidon

continuing with yesterday's theme of hot gods, here's a drawing of Poseidon that my studiomate Becky Cloonan thought was all that, albeit in a Danzig kind of way. She's a real headbanger, that one.

Tomorrow, I'll try to dig up something for the appreciators of the the female form out there.

Zeus

Just because I haven't put up any of my own art for a while...

I remember, when I drew this panel, my girlfriend looked at it and remarked "Whoa! Zeus is hot!!"

That was when I knew I was on the right track with my design of him.

Olympians Synchronicity

At the literary conference I was speaking at this weekend, a very nice teacher named Chris Shave, after hearing me speak about Olympians, presented me with a copy of this recent Hi and Lois sunday comic.

This is amusing to me because my original pitch for the series was, and I quote, "Superheroes are the new mythology. THE OLYMPIANS is a new twelve book series retelling the Greek Myths, the original superheroic stories, in the format most closely associated with superheroes: comics."

I know this is hardly a revolutionary idea or anything, it's just a nice bit of cosmic coincidence to see it reflected in Hi and Lois, of all places.

Journey Upstate

So I'm headed upstate to Mount saint Mary College later today to give a little presentation tomorrow morning, mostly about my book Journey into Mohawk Country. I must say, one of the nicest side benefits of this job of mine is the opportunity to speak at events like this. Mohawk Country in particular has been a very rewarding topic for talks, particularly in the upstate New York region, where the story takes place. I especially enjoy sharing some of the copious amounts of prep work and sketches I compiled while working on it.

A funny little strip by Terry (Strangers in Paradise) Moore sent to me by my friend, the cartoonist Thomas Baehr. It nicely sums up my viewpoint on such matters.

Cyclops vs. Titan vs. Hekatonchieres

Haven't been drawing anything particularly blogworthy so far this week, so instead please enjoy this panel from the upcoming Zeus: Father of the Gods.

Let there be Color...

And, finally the color covers. These may not be the final colors, but this is how I submitted them for first approval to the publisher. Whaddaya think?

More inks!

Continuing the series showing the creation of a cover, from sketch to finish, here are the inks for the Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess cover.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog...

A nice surprise today, as the good folks at Publishers Weekly had a little blurb about my recent comic at Smithmag.com. It's nice when the little things get noticed.

Inks!

Continuing the sequence of the creation of a cover, from rough sketch to finish, here are the final inks for the cover to Zeus: Father of the Gods.

Olympians covers, finished pencils

As promised, here are the finished pencils for the two cover sketches I posted yesterday. It's worth mentioning that these are a bit more polished than the state I normally bring my own pencils to- I normally save most of the drawing for the inking phase. Covers, of course, are so important to the health of your finished book that I wanted to be extra sure that everything was working nicely on them before inks.





On the day I did these, there was something about the Zeus cover on the right that was bugging me. The general consensus around the studios was that there were few things that could stand tweaking, but mostly it was a good piece. For me, however, that drawing had gone past the tipping point of no salvation, and instead I opted to draw a whole new cover the next day. I rarely do anything like that, but when I do, I almost always feel like I did the right thing later.





The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that the head of Medusa has been amped up a bit since the sketches I posted yesterday. Things like that will change throughout the whole process. I can tell you, for instance, that Athena's head will be a mite bit smaller in the inked piece.

Cover Sketches

So here's something. Above are the newly approved sketches for what will be the covers of the first two books in the Olympians series, Zeus: Father of the Gods and Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess. I'm hoping to take you readers through the steps involved in creating these covers, from sketch to final finished artwork. Watch this space for finished pencils,inks, colors, etc.

My new comic at Smithmag.com

Click on the link for an explanation of the above illustration. It's from my new comic at Smithmag,com, a part of their Next Door Neighbor series of autobiographical stories, and I promise you, you will never look at me the same way again.