Working on a New Cover for Issue Three!

Wherein I feel like I reached a new level in my art practice

Hey there, Steamroller Fan!

The past couple of weeks I’ve been working on a new cover for Steamroller Man issue #3 that prominently features the antagonist of that issue, M.A.R.S.H.M.A.L.L.O.W. (To find out what that possibly world-record setting acronym stands for, read the whole story here!)

When I did the original cover, I was going to have Steamroller Man and Night Knight stalked and confronted by the Gingerbread Golem in the bowels of the candy factory, but I’d been wanting to do a M.O.D.O.K. parody/tribute for a while and came up with my own candy-themed version that seemed to fit into this point in the story.

As I’m creating the comic, I’m constantly aware of how long it’s taking me to get pages done in my spare time, working only an hour or two each day before starting my actual paying job. I have so many ideas for characters that I want to do something with, I take any opportunity to slip them into the current storyline, just to get the ideas out into the world. Doing this makes the story morph and evolve in real time, often taking it in directions I didn’t expect. It’s an interesting way to work, and it certainly keeps me creatively engaged!

So - back to the new cover - below you can see the current state of progress on the new cover.

I’m using a dual light source technique here to render the shadows on the figures, which is a relatively new thing for me. While I don’t ever specifically try to copy the work of any particular artist, I’ve always admired this technique when practiced by artists whose work I enjoy: Kevin Nowlan, Adam Hughes, and Bryan Hitch, to name a few. It looks coooooool!

(L to R): Daredevil by Kevin Nowlan, X-Men by Adam Hughes, Batman by Bryan Hitch

This cover piece marked something of a milestone for me in my artistic development. Prior to this, I knew intellectually that I should probably add some areas of black into a drawing, but it was something that I did almost reluctantly, in the way that a kid doesn’t want to brush his teeth, but he’ll roll his eyes and do it, because deep down, he knows he should. I didn’t feel it as an instinctive part of my drawing process, until inking this piece. In fact, I remember a time when I first heard of the technique called spotting blacks and thought “what the hell does that even mean?”¹

But drawing this one really did feel different. This time, I actually had a nagging feeling that something was missing - the inks didn’t feel finished and I needed to add those black areas of shadow on the figures. I’d never really felt that before. So while I know I still have a long way to go in my drawing practice, I do feel that I just leveled up in some small way.

In other news, once I finish this cover, I’m going to be working on my first collaborative story with a fellow Australian comic creator whose work I’ve long admired! This will be a Steamroller Man story, with a twist. I’m not sure how much I can share about this at the moment, so for now I’ll have to leave you in suspense!

Take Care and Keep Rolling!
Matt

1. I looked for a definition to link to here but didn’t find any single… well, definitive one. So, my understanding of the term “spotting blacks” is that it’s the technique of strategically placing areas of solid black in an ink drawing to define form and create contrast with the white areas, thus attracting and directing the viewer’s eye to where you want them to look.