‘Climbing the Tower’ Take Two

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.