Farlaine The Goblin Variant Cover Process

For the upcoming final book of 'Farlaine the Goblin' I did a variant cover! If you are unfamiliar with Farlaine, it's a fairy tale comic story in the same vein as the OZ books. It features a goblin named Farlaine who is looking for a forrest to call his own, and a place that he can plant his tree friend Ehrenwort. He's also accompanied by Drowsy a robot-like creature called a tink. To the left you can see my final cover art, but below is the full process for creating the cover.

I started by making a template in Photoshop of the existing Farlaine cover design (the border placements, the space for the issue #& price, and the stock visuals of a tree and the inset panel of an acorn-like seed, a leaf, and some vine tendrils) as well as the logo. I then drew in the elements that I needed: The tree, the inset panel, and of course, Farlaine, Ehrenwort, and Drowsy. These were all drawn separately on copy paper, and then scanned in to Photoshop and tinted to help me arrange the layout. (I'm trying not to spoil the story, but it appears Ehrenwort is wounded and in trouble)...

With the layout set, I printed it out (on copy paper) and then taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Then, on a light pad, I could ink the piece by using the printout as a guide.

I used Copic Multiliners to ink with, the 0.7 & 0.3 nibs mainly. The goal was just to add my line style to the piece so it felt like 'me'...something always tricky to balance when drawing other people's characters

After the inks were scanned, I could start on the coloring process. The first part of that is always to establish the areas of color, where does one color end and the next start. Here I was lucky in that a lot of the color palate had already been established on the previous book covers. And while usually effects are saved for last, I did tackle some of the color holds (areas where I want to color the linework something other than black) here as well as the wound of Drowsey's that lets light pour out of him.

The final step was the rendering. Adding light and shadow to the forms as well as some texture.
The last book of Farlaine the Goblin will be out in September and is in Previews now for pre-order.

2018 Appearances:

San Diego Comic Con: July 18-22
Baltimore Comic Con: Sept. 28-30
New York Comic Con: Oct. 4-7