Gangsters v Monsters #2

The comics machine Matt Garvey kindly asked me to provide a variant cover (my first cover) for the latest issue of Gangsters v Monsters. Look at that preview art by the awesome Andrea Schiavone! So good!

After sketching a few of the characters and initial ideas on paper I worked up a quick cover layout guide in affinity designer and imported the logo files. I then exported the guides to clip studio paint as a draft layer and scanned in some of my loose sketches.

I switched between procreate and clip studio to create the thumbnails, for some reason thumbnailing was just easier in procreate.

I liked all four of these and couldn’t really decide on a favourite, they all would have been fun to draw, honestly.

After receiving confirmation from Matt on the second thumbnail I started inking the mummy head first, followed by the werewolf before tackling the rest. I decided very quickly to limit the brush size to 0.4, 0.8 and 1.0 for consistency. In hindsight I prob went a little overboard with the texture on the mummy in contrast to the other characters.

I haven’t really been colouring much this last year so took a few hours to refamiliarise myself with some basic techniques before flatting the file, practicing on this art from the previous post.

I had a lot of difficulty nailing down my colour palette and worked up some rough options after finishing the flats.

I coloured this over a few days so decided to create a reference page in clip studio to remind myself of the brushes and combinations used. It was very quick to put together and saved me a good bit of time in the end thankfully.

I had a blast on this and now that the project has surpassed its goal I’m really looking forward to seeing this in print come December.

Shout off in the comments if you’re getting a copy, I’d love to hear from ya!

February 2021

Very quick fan art of Matt Garvey from back in October, drawn in procreate.

Some other stuff from the sketchbook…

December 2019

Hi Ho! Hope you’re all keeping well, not much happening in the sketchbook atm but here’s a few things from the iPad.

Glass Hood fan art sketches drawn in CSP.

Prey fan art sketches drawn in procreate, tried a few variations of the alien designed by J Francis Totti using different references and approaches.

Into the Garvey-verse

Matt Garvey posted this yesterday:

Some fan art of Dave from Untitled Generic Space Comedy to celebrate Matt’s 20th comic launch.

Abandoned fan art sketches of the primary and tertiary characters from UGSC designed by John McFarlane.