Superman/Captain Marvel holiday themed cover sketch

Superman-Captain-Marvel-cover-sketch-Jerry-Ordway-art

This was done for a comic catalog, many years back, and also used on a calendar for Capital distributors.

Prelim for Power of Shazam holographic trading card

Power of Shazam holo card prelim on Ebay!

Hey all, this prelim goes to a complicated job, where the finished art was drawn on three separate sheets of board, so that the holographic process could divide foreground, middle ground and background planes. The final card is pretty darn cool, if i say so myself! But it was a pain to draw all three finished pieces, as I had to draw each stage complete, meaning a whole Captain Marvel figure, and a complete background behind Cap and Billy as well. Best, JER

Adventures of Superman#457 cover color guide.

Adventures of Superman#457 color guide on EBAY

Here's another color guide, from a cover drawn by Dan Jurgens with inks by me, and color guide by me as well. See previous posts for an explanation of the flat color sep process.

Power of Shazam #42 prelim and finished painting

ebay listing for prelim on sale!

Here's a peek into a work in progress. The above is a tight prelim, which was then traced onto a piece of drawing paper, and painted in watercolor dyes, with some Prismacolor pencil for highlights. Below is the final cover.

images are trademark and copyright DC Comics 2011

Coloring guide for Superman#42 by Ordway

Superman#42 coloring guide on Ebay

Hello again! For the uninitiated, in the pre-computer coloring days of comics, when the color separations were done by hand, on overlays, and not with Photoshop, we used to prepare these guides for the separators to work from, with a limited palette of colors based on increments, or percentages of red, yellow and blue. Superman's "red" was a mix of red and a little yellow, for example. On covers we were allowed limited use of grey as well. You had to choose carefully, though, and keep it light in value, as on this one, with the monster's pant leg color, of yellow with a 10-30% greytone on top. Anything darker and you might just wind up with a dark shape, with no line detail seen underneath:) For flesh tones, I liked using a small percentage of blue added to the fleshtone formula, for shadows. The idea was to be creative, and to squeeze the most variations out of the limited palette, for the coolest results. Best,JER

Here's the cover sketch to Power of Shazam#40!

Power of Shazam cover sketch #40 on ebay!

This one was done to illustrate the Mr Mind Goes to Washington story, which was a lot of fun to write!



trademark and copyright 2011 by DC Comics

Superman coloring guide on ebay!

Superman #35 coloring guide


This was done for when I was a regular writer and artist on the Superman titles, and chose colors for the covers as well. Kerry Gammill drew this issue as a fill-in, and I volunteered to color the cover. Note the little pencil notes, with codes referring to a chart that DC supplied us, to spell out the formular for the color separators, who would cut film by hand, on overlay sheets, to create the plates for color printing. The covers offered more color sublety than you got on interior pages, as well as the shiney paper stock, which allowed the black ink plate to really pop from the color ones. To give Lex Luthor's head two color variations, I drew a simple pencil line to indicate where the shadow, or darker skin tone started. All is required was to add a small percentage of blue to the skin tone color, but it really helped make the drawing more 3 dimensional. Alas, this is a lost art, as colors are done on computer, and the one who chooses the color also creates the color plates as well.

Power of Shazam one million cover sketch on ebay

Power of Shazam one million sketch on ebay

Here's a sketch I did for the cover of Shazam that shipped during the DC One Million crossover,  in 1998, I believe. It imagined the DC universe in a million years, and Captain Marvel having succeeded the Wizard Shazam, to the throne on the Rock of Eternity. Fun story.

Here's the finished cover, the only non-painted cover in my run on the comic.