The War for Kaleb(comic series by Jason Pittman)

Whenever I am asked to draw something for someone's comic, I selfishly feel pretty great. "They think that I'm good enough to help sell their book", and all of a sudden I feel great.

Like I'm watching Point Break great.

And that goes double when a friend asks.

So when Jason reached out to me to see about doing a pin up for the final issue of his series The War For Kaleb, I was pretty psyched. I reread the issues(including the last one Jason let me check out) and had an idea of what I definitely did NOT WANT to do, which is just as helpful as knowing what I DO WANT to draw.

I did not want to draw the two halves fighting in the background with the main character in the foreground.

-a quick run down of the comic is of the internal battle in the mind of the main character Kaleb, struggling to hold things together, as he pushes through life. His struggles are represented by two versions of himself in opposing superhero uniforms-

It's not because it's a shitty idea. It's because Jason draws that reoccurring sequence throughout the series already. And I'd like to think that he asked me on here to add something new, not draw over what he's already done.

So I chose to draw a quiet rooftop moment. But there's still trouble if you look for it.

"Fun roof things" are things on roofs that are fun to draw.

Ok, here's where things get fun. At this point, I'm looking to block out the negative space shapes with torn newspaper. This should give a fun surface to draw on, and a more organic tone for the final. But we'll get back to that.

White paint, Sumi ink, charcoal...let's see, anything else? Oh yeah, scraping and smearing with a razor blade and toothbrush. Those Batman and Spider-Man editors are calling with offers any second now...

But I'm really happy how this came out, and once everything gets mostly dry I'll jump in with pencil drawing.

Thankfully, this came out what I was hoping for on this first go around(prepping more pages like this to try again sucks). The eye definitely goes up to the top, but the newspaper texture works just strong enough to bring the viewer down. And some oil bar in the far background building helps to establish some distance.

Please note that it is not brown paint up in the sky. That's what happens when you're cool with a razor blade cutting through just a little too far and into the newspaper.

Again, I had a pretty good idea of the color theme that I wanted to use right away. However, this was a lot harder to color than some of the previous drawings(like Mr Wick and Hellboy here). Using collage and oil bars and pencil like this did not really separate as cleanly into separate levels like the other two drawing did(surprising the fuck out of no one). So after a bunch of hours doing multiple section color range grabs, I was able to get a layer series(FINALLY) that was able to work with the colors like I wanted.

And that trouble I mentioned? There might be some red graffiti on the building that shows that the fight is never really over.

This was a lot of fun working on, especially since I was able to push myself a little further using digital tools. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone else does for the book(check out Jason's kickstarter to see what I'm talking about).