WORK STAGES: Another shockingly difficult pin-up, pt.2! (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 a previous Harley Quinn variant cover, this time around I tried a fantasy-RPG-oriented cover concept, which of course would be more relevant to future work such as The Last Party—aka the new comic project that merges characters from Hushed Half-Elf and Party of Two, which has recently generated yet another amusing new FRPG-ish spinoff project I'll be discussing here before long.

So, I previously showed you the remarkably difficult and challenging roughs and pencil stages for this wacky concept. Well, guess what? Finishing this maddening piece's inks turned out to be even more remarkably challenging and difficult, and wound up taking me an entire g-d workweek to claw my way through. (Though, in truth, that has more to do with the fact that I did not once have a full, uninterrupted workday of drawing-table time last week.)

The good news? This cover is slated to be colored by a red-hot DC colorist recommended to me by my bud Ryan Kinnaird, who you might remember was called in for a coloring consultation on my previous Harley Quinn cover. Per Ryan's further suggestion, this time around I didn't work up a color guide for the piece, hence the lack of such material accompanying the inks above.

In any event, can't seem to get away from the ol' HQ, as I'll likely be doing another variant cover down the road, though (I hope) possibly in an all-digital format. Beyond that, I miiiiight be writing and drawing an HQ short story in the near future, if I can get my page rates squared away. (Perils of not actually having written or drawn any comics for DC in the last 20-odd years, folks; my Wildstorm-era rates have no bearing in the notably less rosy modern era of mainstream comics.)

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Not sure ATM, but sometime this month, I'm hoping to feature the Patreon Exclusive Premiere of Empowered vol. 12's eyecatching cover illo and solicitation copy. Yay?