Shop is open

The shop is now open on the revamped Joshua Middleton Online. There is a selection of original art available at every price point, and the prints are coming soon- I am setting up a new production to produce the finest quality prints available.

Thanks for stopping by,

Joshua

Supergirl 45

Here is the cover for Supergirl 45. I will try to post some process shots in a future post. For now, enjoy the final image!

Joshua

Website relaunch

Joshua Middleton Online has been revamped and relaunched. The final touches are being put on the shop, which should be up and running within a week or so, and more content will be added in the coming weeks. In the meantime, feel free to poke around the rest of the site and let me know if things are running smoothly.

More fun stuff soon,

Joshua

Sidebar Interview

I apologize for the lack of posts, but once again, I am a little too busy to mind the blog. I'll be back soon with more art.

In the meantime, I recently enjoyed an extended conversation with the good guys at Sidebar, a fantastic podcast featuring interviews with all sorts of creative folks. I went on about all sorts of stuff, so if you have some time to spare, feel free to give it a listen. I apologize in advance for a few instances of profanity and various sweeping generalizations.

Sidebar Interview

Joshua

Wizard

Work is keeping me busy and away from the blog, so with apologies, here is a little wizard I sketched the other night for fun. He's not perfect, but I liked him enough to color him. And just to keep the process junkies happy: He was drawn in blue pencil on 8.5" x 11" copy paper, inked with markers, and colored in PS CS4.

I'll try to come back soon with a more substantial post, maybe with the finished cover for Supergirl 45 and some thoughts about the coloring process.

Thanks so much to everyone for the comments. I may not always respond, but I read them all and always appreciate your thoughts.

More soon,

Joshua

Supergirl 41 process pics

I was shooting a little reference for my next Supergirl cover when I noticed these old process pics from 41 still on the camera. For whatever reason, I never got around to posting them, so here they are now.



As you can see, I drew this cover in blue pencil, a Prismacolor Col-Erase 20044 Blue to be exact. I don't always draw in blue nowadays- it depends on the piece and how I am feeling at the time. In this case, I knew that I would be drawing the final in ink, so I decided to go with the blue and then straight to pen, skipping the graphite pencil altogether.



In the second image the blue pencil drawing is nearly done, save for Supergirl's skirt, which can be difficult to draw, although I generally enjoy drawing drapery. Maybe it is because her skirt is too short to allow for many folds, or because I often have to bend the rules of physics to protect Supergirl's modesty, but for whatever reason, the skirt is often drawn last. As you can see, I drew her entire body even though the skirt will cover her pelvis- it is very important to always "draw through" your images. You can see that Supergirl's leg is drawn through Superwoman's body as well.



Here I am inking the blue pencils, though I don't mean "inking" in the traditional comic book sense, in that I am not going in with lineweights and spotting blacks. I was after a simple line drawing so that I could have plenty of room for color later, so I just drew the image in ink in much the same way as I would if I were using a graphite pencil. There are occasions where I will ink with lineweights and spot heavier blacks, but then I would probably use a brush. When I choose not to ink at all and draw the final in graphite, it is usually because I want to maintain a little more delicacy to the drawing while working on it. After scanning and adjusting, it doesn't really matter what I used to draw the image as long as the line quality is good.

The pen is a regular disposable technical pen, of which there are several good brands. Most popular is probably the Pigma Micron series, which I like, but sometimes hurt my index finger due to the way I grip the pen (my finger falls right on the seam where the pen tapers for the cap to fit). Staedtler and Copic also make good pens. I think I am using a Copic Multiliner here. As is always the case, the best tools are what works for you.

I hope these pictures are of some interest. If nothing else, they help give a sense of scale to the art. As always, thanks for stopping by.

Joshua

Supergirl 42

Here is the cover for Supergirl 42. Supergirl is heading to the pink energy-domed city of Kandor. The logo and other trade dress will obscure a fair amount of Supergirl on the published comic, which was my intention.

I made several complete planets in separate files before combining a few to create the small portion seen here. Now I have plenty of extra planets should I need them.

Joshua

Fixed comments malfunction

I just found out that the commenting function apparently hasn't been working properly. I tried to change the way comments were displayed when I changed the look of the blog a little while ago, but something obviously went wrong. I switched it back, which I believe fixed the problem, so hopefully anybody wanting to comment won't run into any more trouble. If anybody has anything they'd like to share about the last couple of posts, please feel free. It's beginning to feel lonely around here!

More art soon-

Joshua

Supergirl 41

And here is the cover for Supergirl 41.

For whatever reason, the DC heroes always seem to beg for very saturated, pure colors. When I have tried to pull things back, it always looks odd to me, even though I often shy away from super-saturated colors in my other work. So once again, Supergirl and Superwoman are soaked with red and blue.

Something else to keep in mind about the covers I post here is that they are designed for print on a comic book, and as a result, they will never look as bright and shiny in the real world as they do on a glowing computer display. I have learned over the years to push the levels about 10% further than I think I should while working on the computer. By the time it sees print, it usually looks about right. Early on in my career, I was often frustrated that my printed work always seemed washed-out compared to what I was staring at in Photoshop. I didn't stop to consider the properties and limitations of ink on paper, just one potential pitfall of working digitally.

I suppose I could knock the saturation back just a touch on the JPEG's I post here to better approximate the printed look, or better yet, you folks can go buy the books!

Thanks for looking!

Joshua

Supergirl 39

This is the cover to issue 39 of Supergirl, featuring Reactron.

I wasn't sure how to go about rendering all of the metal, and wound up experimenting quite a bit. I started with a quick digital sketch as a foundation (which I used to get approval for the image from my editor) and made a new line drawing by tracing the rough sketch cleanly. I then shaded the line drawing by hand with some water-soluble graphite pencils, which I was able to blend with a clean wet brush. I also went in with some white paint to pull out some highlights. I scanned the gray "chrome" rendering back into the computer, placed it over my basic sketch, and tried several different blending modes to marry it with the base layer. It required quite a bit of brushing and smudging to look decent.

After a lot of playing around, I somehow arrived at this. I'm not sure if I pulled off exactly what I had in mind originally, and the metal is more convincing in some areas than others, but that's how it goes.

As soon as I finished this one, I went straight to work on another Supergirl cover, which I will post this weekend.

Thanks for stopping by.

Joshua