A Real Faux Pulp Magazine Cover!

If you have been paying attention, you already know how fond I am of pulp fiction cover art.  So when I saw a chance to do one as an invitation for an annual chili party that my wife and I throw, I couldn't resist. 

For an authentic look, there are a number of known parameters.  I will comment on these as we come to them.  First, on your illustration you leave the top quarter of the page clear of any important detail, and also preferably very dark, because that is where you know the magazine title and other publishing information will go.  Seeing original pulp cover paintings is sometimes startling because without the masthead logo they look out of balance, but of course they were not meant to ever be seen in this way.  And if you design your composition without bearing this typographic component in mind, you will come to grief.

For inspiration I referred to the very fine book Pulp Culture: the Art of Fiction Magazines, by Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson.   The internet also offers a number of good dedicated websites with hundreds of cover scans among them.

I thought it would be fun to show a cult of people fatally enslaved to the chili I make, so my cover ostensibly illustrates a story called "Slaves of the Cauldron."  Chains, people in hooded robes, a cavernous stone chamber, the cliché of the sinister green hand, and a look of mad ecstasy on the face of the man receiving his chili.

Here is the first rough sketch:

 

This includes a blocking in of the title logo, Chili Detective Magazine, (in faint blue line) and also a blocking of the mock story titles that always have to be included, because I want the final illustration to have the look of a cover as it might actually appear on a newsstand.

And since I will be having this printed by a copy service on standard letter size paper, I proportion it to just fit inside the printable area, with the idea of hand trimming the white border off with a paper cutter, giving the result its appropriate full-bleed effect. [That is, the printing would extend clear to the cut edge of the paper.]

To further prove the composition, now in Photoshop I paint in the full value range in black and white.

This step can be quite helpful for anyone tending to be timid about high contrast.  Also, going straight into color, one can fail to realize that two vividly contrasting colors juxtaposed with one another might still be very close in value. You put black where there is no light and bright highlights wherever that is appropriate, plus a good range of grays inbetween.

There is no need to get overly detailed at this stage, however.

Next, I add some color on a new layer to establish my palette, and I lay in placeholders for most of the typographic elements:

This typography was done in Photoshop, but the final will be done in Illustrator, where I have greater control and more options for effects.

Next:  The Detailed Pencil Drawing

After the Final

In terms strictly of painting, of adjusting individual pixels, I was done.  But I couldn't resist fooling around a bit with Photoshop filters and modes, just to see what might occur.

Here is what happened when I simply increased the contrast (under Image/Adjust/Brightness-Contrast) to 100%:

(Click on pictures for larger view.)

What I got here was a hot rendition--not only high in contrast but apparently high in saturation as well.  Compare this with the relatively subdued image in the previous post.  By comparison, this is like a pulp magazine cover.  And incidentally, if you are unfamiliar with illustration for print, this much variation is well within the sort of color rendition you might expect on different press runs of the same picture without someone doing press checks.

And you know?  I like it better.  The high contrast  suits the mood of madness implied by the animator's expression.

I then tried one more thing--I wanted to see how the image would look without color. So: Image/Adjust/Black and White.  This give you a popup panel with sliders not only for yellows, magentas and cyans, but also greens, reds and blues.  I tried pushing the Yellow slider almost all the way to the right, and it naturally brightened the whole area where the light is radiating up from the animation board.

Final Painting

(Click twice on the picture to view larger versions.)

Differences between this and the last version are few and subtle but worth doing.  I did more on the shirt, working some on the shadows of the folds and brightening the highlight on the back.  The wristwatch is more detailed, and I darkened the shadowed area of the chair back.  In a light gray I added suggestions of calibration markings to the black peg bars of the drawing disk.

On a new layer I then airbrushed a dark cool tone over everything except the figure and the desktop, which has the effect of bringing up the glow of the papers and their light source still more.  As a last touch on yet another new layer, I added a mist of gold emanating from the drawing surface and reaching to the face, like light on tiny motes of airborne dust.

A few posts back, I mentioned that I had the pencil drawing layer always available in the Photoshop layer stack, above all the painting layers.  I could turn it on and off to check detail, perspective, and anything else I had first deliniated in pencil.  Just for fun, here is how the final painting looks with that layer turned on:

Final with pencil drawing overlay turned on.  Click on picture for larger view.

As you can see, this layer, useful as it was, now adds nothing to the painting except a degree of darkness and loss of saturation.  Everything I wanted from it I have transferred into the painting, which was my intention from the start.

And so it's finished, I thought.  And yet...

Next:  Beyond Final

Foreground Detail_Part Two

Now at last I have taken on the face, the hair, the eyeglasses with their dramatic reflections, the folds in the shirt, the edge of the desk, working with extremely small brushes in some cases, and doing some blending.  But not too much blending; I like the more painterly look and the vibrancy of juxtaposing unblended color areas.

Also, as in some of the best portrait photography, allowing some areas to remain unfocused or otherwise unresolved adds an even greater appearance of sharpness to the areas that are more fully developed.  Not everything should be in HD!

Here is the photo that was my main facial reference (and obviously also for the right hand):

Next: Finished!

Foreground Detail_Part One

Again, working carefully from back to front, I have now detailed the aluminum drawing disk, the hands and the papers.  A pencil appears in the right hand.

I had a number of reference photos to work from for this composition.  Here is the one I was using most at this point:

Reference material, while quite useful, should nonetheless be used selectively and not too slavishly.  But here you can see that I did rely on it heavily for the light effects on the bevel of the disc and for the effect of the light coming up through the papers from beneath.  (In case you don't know, the aluminum disc has a rectangle of frosted glass inset in its center and a light source underneath, giving translucency to the paper and thus the ability of the animator to closely relate a series of drawings to one another.)

Next: The Face and Torso

When the Background Takes the Forefront

As you see, there are few changes to the foreground from the last version.  This is very hard for me!  My tendency is to want to get right to the pose, the hands, the face, because those are the things that interest me most.  It explains part of my attraction to animation:  the animator, I once thought,  is free to play with the character and leave the background and other tiresome detail to others.

Of course this is a mistake of snobbery, for the setting and surroundings are important in the extreme to the overall persuasiveness of a scene, whether it be a single painted image or an animation sequence.  In another way of thinking, the human or other character is just the central element among a host of contributing elements.  So I have learned to give due attention to the layout and background, and I have not been sorry.

Also, in opaque media it makes sense to detail a scene from back to front  so that, once established, edges and forms closer to the front are not interfered with by any subsequent work on forms behind.

An exception here is the forward desk edge that I decided to add.  It gives a more accurate impression of the proportions of an animator's desk, and it strengthens the composition as well with its strong angle that sweeps the eye back around and into the picture.

Here was an instance where I turned the drawing layer on frequently to check the alignment of the painted contours with the ruled lines on the drawing.   I think the result is a fairly convincing space from the back wall around the corner to the wall on the left.

Next:  The Foreground At Last!

Establishing the Palette

Here I have blocked in the colors and, to a great extent, the value range I want.  Most important is the effect of light coming through the glass and paper on the drawing disk; it bathes the animator's face in its glow, enhancing his mad and zealous look.  There is a cooler secondary light coming in from the right.  This is daylight coming through windows and must not overpower the other.

Most of the palette is made up of colors selected from this reference photo.  Note all the detail of the photo that I have left out.  As important as knowing what to put in, is knowing what to omit.

Next:  Detailing the Background