Gerhard Art

I received an email from Dean that said, in part, ‘…based on the previous information you had provided me on how you would normally receive a cover image from Dave, I painstakingly went through the commission image that Dave had done (which Dean owns), and removed the tone and the tower in the hopes that you might be interested in redoing the piece as a colour, painted piece. Similar to how you would have done a cover back in the day…’

Here is the end result:

Here’s how I got there:

step 1: the original drawing by Dave

step 2: the image that Dean had created by removing all of the tone and backgrounds

step 3: my rough pencils around the Cerebus figure

step 4: my inks

step 5: my colouring

Here’s a GIF of the process:

An interesting little trip back 31 years to 1986, issue 86.

In a lot of ways, it seems like it was just three days ago…

…not three decades.

***

Update… email from Dean:

‘So I added the logo, issn number and the price to the cover to 86.5…you know…cause I’m a geek.’

I could start a whole series of covers that depict what happened between issues…

…call it, ‘Cerebus: Between the Covers’…

…nah.

I got this email the other day:

“Hi Ger –

Hope you’re all doing well, welcome to 2017!

Don Rosa was in Albuquerque this weekend and I brought in the Yukon $crooge commission,

he was quite taken with how you finished out the background.

Thanks again and I’ll be in touch eventually!

Steve”

Thanks Steve…Way Cool!

Look forward to the next commission.

Here is, in part, the description I received for this commission:

“Perhaps the best way to describe my project is a modern-day Dracula meets Arkham Asylum, but done in a way that represents people with mental illnesses, particularly those who have been found by the courts to be Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. The main setting of my story is “Monkshood,” a forensic psychiatric hospital complex comprised of neighboring buildings from Dracula lore: Seward Sanitarium and Carfax Abbey, and influenced by real-world Broadmoor Hospital in the UK. Monkshood… should be a character in and of itself.”

So with that in mind I came up with this layout:

This seemed too wide and panoramic, so I cropped it down a bit:

This didn’t look sinister enough, so I changed the angle and moved some buildings around:

Then I did a mock-up on the computer of the shading:

And then it was a matter of drawing it full size:

This is as far as I got before Christmas (so close!):

Here is the completed piece:

Here are some close-ups:

Ta-da!

Okay…what’s next?