T-Rex Cyclops + Silver Surfer's board

And Ex Nihilo. And Galactus head. And body.

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.

Confused by the title? I’d be confused if you’re not confused. However…

A bit of news first: With my work on The Sacrificers concluded for the time being, I’ve been shifting my energy to the new thing I’m doing with Rick. We already have plenty of concepts, story bits, character designs and more, but it will be a long while before I can show anything.

But I’m also catching up with cover work (one for a new book written by pal Jordan Thomas, called Skin Police, and a double cover for GI Joe - exciting!) and commissions. And we’ll focus on one of the latter today.

My craziest commission ever

Hence the title of this newsletter. It’s Ex Nihilo (a character I’d never heard of before working on this piece), riding a T-Rex Cyclops on Silver Surfer’s board, while holding Galactus’ head above his own and going through space. If you’re trying to find the logic, the commissioner has a whole team he came up with of dino riders and villains, using Marvel characters. This is just one element of the world he constructed.

Comics.

Speaking seriously, I don’t love doing commissions. I don’t absolutely hate it either, but I can’t find in them the same feeling I get from working on comics, where I’m actively building worlds and telling stories. Commissions are, first and foremost, for the client - therefore less interesting to me as I don’t get to be as creative as usual. I don’t even advertise them, the ones I do are always for people that write me asking for one.

BUT, there are two factors that keep it fun for me: 1. the fact that I’m creating something specifically for someone who values it very much (everyone looking for original art does) is indeed a great feeling. 2. the challenge of aiming at technical perfection is a great one. The original is the thing that matters, so every line, every brush stroke must be created with the idea that they’ll be looked at and valued. There is no I’ll fix it later digitally.

And let’s be real: they pay good money and that matters as well.

As usual, this one started with the sketch. Despite the complexity of the request, the idea was quickly approved.

Once I showed the client the pencils, he asked for a couple of additions: to have the X-Men X on the T-Rex’s chest and to add Galactus body in the background, if possible. I did both but the pencil scan will forever be missing them.

Before the final grey tones, I always scan the inks - it’s part of the digital package I offer alongside the original piece:

While working on it, I always take numerous pictures of the work in progress to share with the commissioner. I believe it helps the experience feel a bit more special and they usually get a good kick out seeing their idea coming to life. Here’s a few pics of finished details where you can see what materials were used:

Nibs for all the lines, brush for the black background, a white gel pen for stars and screen tones (three different ones) for the main elements, with scratched highlights. All done on 250g paper.

Here’s a photo of the thing. All that ink inevitably ends up curling the paper a bit, but this one holds it pretty well. Again, because it’s all about the original, I was very careful in spreading it as much as possible with the brush to avoid excessive paper curling and waving, while making sure it was as uniformly black as it can be.

Void Rivals cover

To close, the last one of my 6 connecting covers for Void Rivals is out there (colors by Chris O’Halloran). So expect a step by step of this mammoth piece coming soon - something I’ve been excited to show for a while.

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See you next week!

André