Issue One Cover Art Process

Hey everyone, Brian here! I wanted to give you an inside look at creating the cover to the first issue of Ufolojoy.

I knew right away I wanted to have my favorite Cyptid on the cover; Mothman! The cover was loosely inspired by the first sighting at the TNT domes, but rather than it have two couples, it features a family of four. Here is the final piece... more on the process of it's creation below that.

I started the process by first creating various small thumbnail sketches. I then picked my favorite composition and further expanded upon that thumbnail, which you can see below:

I wanted to create the final cover digitally, but still wanted that painterly/analog look to it. For the final composition and look I was heavily inspired by one of my favorite American Illustrators, Stevan Dohanos. Dohanos work was primarily featured on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. Throughout the 40s and 50s he created over 125 Post covers.

here are some of my favorites by Dohanos:

I started the final painting by first laying down an under painting, and then blocked in all of my darks. From there I worked in the rest of the background and worked from dark to light to lay out of the rest of the Illustration. The third image below you can see the illustration, more or less, from start to finish.