Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Power of Shazam#9 from sketch to finish

Started with this, which was a sketch for DC's promo book for that year, and meant ultimately for an issue of the Power of Shazam. The story in the comic at this point had introduced Mary Marvel and her nemesis Madame Libertine, as well as Captain Marvel Jr and Captain Nazi, so the idea was that this would be a big fight, with the demon Blaze behind the scenes, pulling the strings.


The issue this was slotted for turned out to be Power of Shazam#9, and here I drew a full sized prelim on tracing paper, fairly tightly rendered. This was then traced using a lightbox, onto 2-ply kidd finish Strathmore art paper, in pencil.

Ebay link for prelim here

The color art was done using washes of Dr Martin's watercolor dyes, a very vibrant and transparent medium. Then I often used colored Prismacolor pencils to add extra shading, and also some black ink to punch up the whole thing. These paintings were photographed as film transparencies, and then digitized for print, because we found that digital scanners tended to lose subtleties due to the scanner lights basically bouncing through the color and reflecting back the white of the paper too much. Opaque medium such as gouache or acrylic seem to scan truer, but it generally took me too long painting that way. DC solved the problem, so I continued with the transparent watercolors. What is seen below is the printed comic cover, with the logo and copy in place.


Power of Shazam, and all related characters are trademark and copyright 2013 by DC Entertainment, and used for educational purposes. No further reproduction of these images is allowed or authorized by the rights holder.

11 comments:

Keith said...

I'm just curious Jerry, do you do commissions? And if you do, how much would you normally charge for a piece like this?

Keith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Mikulovsky said...

Hi Jer
It's always very interesting to see this process. My favorote series you worked on & Red Menace with American Eagle. I wish had stayed with their roots. Not went this 52 route which I personally hate. Shazam!

Tim said...

Oh wow!!! I was lucky enough to win the initial sketch on ebay some time ago and oh how I would love to have this to match! My wife would absolutely kill me if I tried! LOL! Greatwork of art! BTW. Mr. Ordway, will you be making any convention appearances any time soon? Especially near the Kentucky or Tennessee area?

MetropolisKid41 said...

This awesome! I love seeing the multi-step process unfold, thanks for sharing! I'm currently the high bidder on this! Hope I end up winning! Great work as always Jerry! Shazam!

Keith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Keith said...

Woohoo! Managed to win the auction. I'm really looking forward to framing this piece alongside the finished comic and putting it up on the wall. Thanks Mr. Ordway!

Captain Nemo said...

Hi,
I am a huge fan of your art especially from your time on All-Star Squadron. It was a huge book for me growing up as issue 31 was the first comic I ever bought and its still has one of my favorite covers. I was wondering if you accept commision requests. It would be an honor to own a piece of you art as it has its roots in my own interest in comics
Thank you,
Alex Lopez

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