Work stages on a recent cover (SHH!) (Patreon)

To be honest, I dunno about posting Marvel or DC stuff here, especially of a recent variety, so I'm keeping this cover illo's title off the open aspects of Patreon. Shh!

Anyhoo, issue #5 of the new Marvel series Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda, written by my buddy Jim Zub, features a brief appearance by characters that Rick Mays and I created for the 2006 miniseries Livewires. So, I was approached about drawing a variant cover, which I was happy to do, despite  a flare-up of my drawing-hand issues a few months ago. 

In fact, I begged off drawing a variant cover for the upcoming Venom: The End one-shot I wrote in favor of doing this one, as I felt I could only draw one such illo given my ailing hand—and the Livewires are my babies in a way that Venom certainly never could be. Ah, but guess what? The deadline was extended, so I am currently inking my maddeningly detailed variant cover for Venom: The End. (And my hand seems better nowadays, so yay.)

One note on the work process: Man, working digitally in Procreate makes the creation of cover roughs much, much easier. Here's the first rough, which didn't quite work for me:

...and my second Procreate take, which was more successful:

The rest of the work stages (pencils, inks, color guide) were all done by hand, "analog"-style, as I am a very long ways off from being able to produce finished artwork digitally. 

Final colors on the piece were provided by the great colorist Rico Renzi (Loose Ends, Spider-Gwen, etc.). Woo hoo! 

And now, back to day 2 of inking Venom: The End's variant cover. You'd best believe there will be a day 3 and likely a day 4, as I am rusty as hell at inking cover illos; in fact, I think I've only done two of 'em (this one, and Empowered vol.11's) in the last three years. Ouch!