Another quick update with cover images. This week it’s the inks from Salvage Hounds volume 01.
The first is the wrap-around cover inks (above). I’ve been pushing myself to use more blacks and shadows in my inks, especially on this book. However, knowing that the background was going to be a black, starry space sky made me hold off on putting too many shadows in the foreground.
Below are the isolated front and back covers.
Cover inks are never really intended to stand on their own. After all, things like the planet are going to be painted, so leaving space for that to come later means picking and choosing where to spend time on line details.
I ended up using more black shadows on the mechanical elements, such as the ship and mecha. The aim was to give them a little more weight as background elements and let the characters pop out a little more—almost like separating character cels from an animation background.
These will now be live in the Pen and Inks Gallery. Stay tuned for the final clean cover painting, coming soon!