Joe Quin Ones' LiveJournal

So this year's edition of Spectrum is now in stores and whew boy, it's a doozy. The book features loads of, well, fantastic art, including the likes of Jon Foster, Greg Manchess, Adam Hughes and Paolo Rivera. Be sure to check it out!

Oh yeah, and I'm in there as well. Thanks to the Spectrum folks for highlighting my art opposite the inside title page. I was flattered.

You can find your copy either in bookstores or online. Here's a link to Amazon's listing for it.

Have a happy turkey day everybody!

I don't do this all that often, but I thought it might be fun to go through one of my recent pieces and break it down for you all step by step. On the chopping block? The cover to Amazing Spider-man #633.

Now the first thing I start with when approaching any illustration project is a rough thumbnail. Here I work out concept, composition and any other initial drawing details. This is probably the most important phase in the illustration process; it's where all the key decisions are made.


Pending approval by my editors, the piece goes on to the next phase: pencilling! I'll generally start by digitally blowing up my thumbnails to the scale I'll be working at (here, roughly 11'' x 17''). Next, I lightbox the blown-up thumbnail under my artboard and trace out the basic composition, fine tuning the drawing here and there. Since the initial thumbnail was fairly tight to begin with, there isn't too much editing I need to do through this stage.


Following the initial trace, I get into drawing and slowly build up the form. Here, any rendering I might do serves solely as a blueprint for the coming inks.

Just about all of my inking is done with a Windsor & Newton series 7 size 3 sable brush, though occasionally I'll use a size 1 for smaller details. These cover most of the line-work in the entire piece, with sparse nib or mechanical pen lines here or there. All of the 'rendered' areas in the piece are done with dry-brush, for which I use a crappy size 4 or 5 sable brush I keep lying around.

*I should note before going onto the next step that the original art was actually drawn on two separate boards to allow for easy separation when it comes to adding in digital color. I planned on digitally coloring the throwback line-work behind Kraven separate from the 'tear' lines encasing them. With the rough texture of the tears, I thought it easiest to draw each piece individually, and join them via layers in photoshop.


When coloring, I generally start by laying in big blocks of color, contouring to the overlaid inked line-drawing. These are called 'flats'. Nowadays, I usually farm out this task. The highly recommended and very talented Orpheus is responsible for these.

Then it's on to coloring. I'll do a more in-depth post about my coloring technique at some later date, but the basic gist of it involves me using a low-opacity, hard-edge brush to lay in initial tones, which I then later smooth out with a soft-edge brush. Because my brush is at a low opacity, no matter how saturated my foreground color is, when I make a stroke on the art surface, it comes out lighter. Each successive stroke over that initial one darkens and/or saturates that stroke.


And here's a look at some of that in practice:


The initial roughing in of value,


and the following 'smoothing' process.



And, in case any of you forgot, here's the finished cover.

WHEW!! IT'S A MEGA POST. To quote Roy Scheider, "we're gonna need a bigger blog." ...Wait... is that the quote? Anywho, hope you all enjoyed this one. Hopefully it was helpful to SOMEBODY out there.

-Joey

So Marvel just posted some variant covers I did for some upcoming issues of 'Amazing Spider-man.' These are the first three in a series of villain-centric covers for the series showcasing the characters' new redesigns. Above is the redesign for Electro. Hope you like!
Sandman

Kraven

I've been sitting on this one for a little bit, but the solicitations just came out, so now I'm freed to post at will. Above is one of two covers for the final issue of the Boom! comic miniseries Hunter's Fortune. The second cover is by the ever talented, Phil Noto.

Anywho, the series follows a young man (Hunter) who has inherited his recently deceased uncle's fortune. However his uncle has placed a stipulation on Hunter's inheritance, which is that in order to retain the many millions of dollars his uncle had, he must set out and uncover the mythic sword of Excalibur! Rough.

Because of the Excalibur theme, I decided to do a stained glass motif a la classic medieval architecture. It was not my first instinct. Here's alook at the sketches I did for the cover.

This issue involved a character named Miranda who is also in search of the sword, and serves as a bit of a foil to our protagonist. There's also some reference to the 'Lady of the Lake', so I went slightly more conceptual showcasing Miranda AS the 'Lady.' This was my first sketch.

This was my second sketch. Pretty much the same as the final cover, though originally I had Miranda oriented at the top. Hunter being the main character, I was asked to flip the composition around. Even still, I tried to make each view of the illustration equally engaging. Hopefully that's true.

Above is a commission from the Big Apple Con that I just didn't have the time to get to last weekend. Thomas, the kind young man who ordered this commission as well as a few other was understanding enough to allow me to finish up the drawing for him at home. I felt bad about making him wait, so I decided to add in a little color to this one. Hope you like!

And the blog posts keep comin'! Today issue no 65 of DC's 'Superman/Batman' series came out. It's a Halloween issue with a bunch of short stories exploring the worst nightmares of Batman, Superman and their corresponding villains.
Here's my three page Lex Luthor story from the issue (sans dialogue):

Annnnd here I am with my next post.
As some of you already know, Paolo Rivera and I collaborated on an illustration which we sold as prints this past weekend at the Big Apple Con. What you don't know, is that I've also started selling some prints of my Green Lantern pages from Wednesday Comics as well.
You can find them all for sale here at my Etsy shop. Enjoy!

--Original art to come soon. Stay posted!

Well the weekend has come and gone, and with it my very first Big Apple Con.
I had a great time, and drew a TON. Here's a look at most of the commission I did there:

A slightly perturbed Hulk-

Ethereal lovers - Dr. Stephen Strange and his lady friend, Clea-

None other than Dave Stevens jet pack wielding Rocketeer-

A sprinting Green Lantern-

A rather confused Spider-man on Halloween-

A member of Batman's rogues gallery, The Mad Hatter-

DC's Teen Titan empath, Raven-

Everyone's favorite Justice League member that can talk to fish, Aquaman!

(actually, the dude who commissioned this drawing never came to pick it up! If you're reading this good sir, I'll be happy to mail this along to you)

And last is a commission of the character Mina Harker as portrayed in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-

The drawing was actually commissioned by none other than Scott Adsit of 30 Rock fame. Scott was a really nice guy, and apparently a huge comic fan. Here we are together with Mina-


So there you have it, my weekend in drawing. There's some new stuff going on with my online store as well, but I'll save that for my next post.

Cheers.

Green Lantern: "ain't I a stinker?'

Pictured above is the finished art from a collaborative piece comics pal Paolo Rivera and I worked on. Technically it's not the first.
The artwork is, of course referencing the classic John Romita (Sr.) cover to Amazing Spider-man no. 39 from way back in 1966.

It was a bunch of fun to work on, and an interesting way of working as we tried our best to pretty evenly split the art-making duties. Paolo pencilled in the city and Green Lantern, then shipped the piece over to me. I pencilled in Spidey and all the lettering, then inked everything. I then sent the artwork back to Paolo where he finished things off by painting in the colors. Here's a look at how the art looked before Paolo laid in the paint-


Paolo and I will be selling these as prints (which come richly colored on 11 by 17 card stock) this weekend at Wizard's 'Big Apple Con' in NYC. The two of us will both be tabling there beside one another and will have the original piece on display as well. So if you'll be attending the con, keep an eye out!

It's been a busy busy time these past couple month - which has been great! Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to show anything that I've been working on until projects are announced, yada yada... So anyway, instead I decided to post an image from the vault.

It's a depiction of everyone's favorite sarcastic sai wielding mutant reptile, Raphael! This one hails from all the way back to 2003, when Marvel comics hot shot Paolo Rivera and I were still in school together. I had asked Paolo to draw something in my sketchbook. He drew this. I inked it.
Apropos to this early collaboration, Paolo and I have decided to team up once more. Assuming we aren't too slow to pull it off, we're looking to debut a new collaborative print at the Big Apple Con this weekend. Stay tuned for updates.

Hey all,
Just thought I'd let everyone know I was just recently interviewed by Tennessee's own Brett Williams. Brett's a writer and beard enthusiast who also has a deep love and appreciation for comics. He keeps up a blog dedicated to the medium where you can read his reviews, musings, and of course, our interview. Check it out!

Also, I didn't realize it was coming out yet, but this past Wednesday saw the release of Madman -Atomic Comics no. 17. It, on it's own merits, it's totally worth a trip to the comic shop. But also within this issue is a pinup art gallery including the works of Jim Rugg, Craig Thompson, James Jean and yours truly. Scope it!
Also, just to add a little more meat to this post, here's a look at some of my initial sketches for the pinup. Enjoy!

Well it happened. We've reached the end of the road today with the release of Wednesday Comics' twelfth and final issue.

Farewell and adieu to ye fare spanish ladies....

(sniffle)
Thanks to everybody who's followed the series to the end. It was a lot of fun to work on, so I'm glad people have been enjoying it.

Cheers!

Green Lantern: "I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of bubble gum."

Just one Wednesday to go and that's all, folks.

Looks like we've arrived at week 9 of Wednesday Comics already! Wow. Only three issues left! Oh where oh where did you go summer? I miss you. Anyway, here's a sample of my art for the current issue:

As well as a sample from last weeks page 8:

Enjoy!

In other news, I'll be doing a signing later this month at Hub Comics in Somerville, MA. The signing will be held from 7-9 pm on Wednesday, September 23, commencing the release of the final issue of Wednesday Comics! I'll have t-shirts and original artwork to look at (buy?), so if you're in the area, stop on by!
Beyond that, I've also just been added to the guest list for this year's Big Apple Con in New York this October. New Yorkers? I look forward to seeing you. Yes.

The weeks keep ushering on...

Here's a look at the sans dialogue art for page 6


And the first panel of page 7



As well as some first panels of proceeding pages....





And one last tease....


Enjoy!

Out now!
Here's a detail of a few panels from this weeks installment-

Yes, yes. It IS worthy of a spit take.

Another week, another Wednesday, and with it comes the release of issue 4 of Wednesday Comics. We're now a third through the series and all the stories seem to ramping up this week. Worth checking out, says I.

Here's a look at the (sans Busiek dialogue) art for this issue-

And some preproduction sketches -

The Wednesday keep a comin.' Today issue 3 of Wednesday comics hit the stands. Here's a glimpse at the pencils of my contribution to this weeks issue-

Another week. Another Wednesday. Another Wednesday Comics.
Today the second installment of the series hits comic stands. I assure you, it is worthy of a purchase. Here's a preview of my contribution for this issue (sans Kurt Busiek dialogue)

And another side by side comparison with its original:

But wait! There's more!
Recently the good folks at DC's blog, 'The Source' asked for people to submit pictures of themselves or friends reading Wednesday Comics. You can see some of the results of that here and here.
I couldn't resist getting some of my friends in on that photographic action. So here's a picture of pals Maris, Liz and Tim in the outfits they wore for reference on page 1 reading Wednesday Comics. Whew.

And a look at how they appeared in page 1 -

Why have I forsaken thee? You're like the Evil Bart Simpson I keep hidden in the attic, only to occasionally drop a few table scraps with.

I'm sorry, kid! I am. I'll try and do better... I - Why I've got some posts for you right now. Yeah! That's right. See? I wasn't joking, was I? Okay here goes...

(please nobody tell LJ that most of the following was stolen off my blogspot)


1. Wednesday Comics!
Huzzah the first issue has finally been released! What is Wednesday Comics you ask? Here's the rundown:
"DC Comics gives a fresh twist to a grand comics tradition with Wednesday Comics, a new, weekly 12-issue series by some of the greatest names in comics today!
"Wednesday Comics is unique in modern comics history: Reinventing the classic weekly newspaper comics section, it is a 16-page weekly that unfolds to a sprawling 28" x 20" tabloid-sized reading experience bursting with mind-blowing color, action and excitement, with each feature on its own 14" x 20" page."
Here's a preview of the first page, sans Kurt Busiek's brilliant writing.



And here's a look at the printed page side by side with its original. For comparing and such.


2. Mike Allred's MADMAN

Here's a look at a pinup I just recently finished up for the spectacular Mike Allred. I love all of Mike's works, and in particular his Madman series. So I was really flattered when he asked me to draw a pinup for the up and coming final issue of the series' current run for Image comics. It was a blast to work on.

3. Other stuff
We'll finish up this post with a selection of pinups and recent commissions I've done at conventions.

Kitty Pryde-


Princess Leia Organa


Raven (of Teen Titans fame)


Starfire (also of Teen Titans fame)


Batgirl


And that does it for this mega-post. More to come soon. (I swear!)