A Shockingly Difficult Pin-Up, pt.3: The colorful conclusion! (Patreon)

I'm more than a tad dubious about posting DC or Marvel stuff here, so keep this to yourselves, okay?

Anyhoo, following up on an earlier post, here are the color Work Stages for a Harley Quinn variant cover I worked on earlier this summer, which wound up being a shockingly stressful and challenging creative experience. The visual motif I elected to pursue was "vaguely cyperpunky SF," so I elected to draw an image of a hardsuited HQ with mechahyenas.

So, the first image in the gallery above was the colorist's initial take on the colors. (Dunno his or her name, alas, as all this stuff was relayed through the editor.)

I worked up a quick guide jpeg on some minor tweaks to the piece:

...but found myself wondering why the colored illo seemed so tough to "read." 

So I consulted my bud Ryan Kinnaird, who has colored many, many pieces for me in the past. He sent back a quick pass on the colors, with his well-informed opinions on ways to clarify the colors:

...including a second background color option:

...which, tonally, has a broadly similar color scheme to the cover illo for Empowered vol.12, which Ryan also colored. (More on that later in the month, folks, as the time finally approaches to reveal vol.12's cover and solicitation copy.)

Needless to say, my editor was nonplussed to get back such an elaborate set of "color guides." (Speaking of which, I'm tacking on my original color guides to the end of the image gallery.) He asked why the heck I didn't just have Ryan color the piece in the first place; that might've been a good idea, TBH, because this specific illo is so heavily rooted in the "cyberpunky color riffs" of my older colored work—as in glows & "glitter FX" & color trails & highlights.

OTOH, I didn't ask originally ask Ryan to color this piece because, well, there's no future in having him do that; understandably, he's not interested in coloring comics long-term. I need to try out collaborations with other colorists in case I do a color book again, though most of my attempts at such collabs in recent years have been unsuccessful at best. Frankly, I rarely like anyone's colors over my line art.

Side note: To clarify, all my collabs with Guru eFX have been great—including the just-wrapped Man-Thing vs. Wolverine story—but they're so overloaded with Marvel work that they couldn't possibly color an ongoing book for me.

Anyhoo, with Ryan's suggestions in mind, the unnamed colorist took another stab at the colors:

...and I thought the piece "read" a good bit more clearly, so I gave it the ol' thumbs-up and moved on with my life.

At present, I'm working on a theoretically less demanding Harley Quinn cover illo with a fantasy RPG bent, which I hope will work out more smoothly. Maybe not, though, as I'm having trouble dragging my sorry ass through final pencils on the g-d thing, despite having a fairly enjoyable time on working up its rough; dunno how many more covers like this I should attempt, given that I'm not really a "cover artist" per se.

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Not sure, TBH, as we return to a less grueling "M/W/F" posting schedule. Whew!