When I was 13 Process Shots Part 1

The cover actually involved quite a bit of perspective work, and the view is supposed to be from a second level balcony.  I really should've pulled the shot out further, but I didn't want to lose too much detail or too much of the story.  I've blocked in where I'm going to put in the logo (bottom right hand corner).

Here's the logo design.  I actually changed the 13 in this design to ITC CuppahJoe.

It took 13 additional sheets of paper to work out the perspective grid for the cover.  Bowie helped.

I set up the perspective grids for the second page's rough pretty much the same way as I did for the first page, but it required a lot less paper.  Corrections for both pages were made in Photoshop before printing the bluelines, and further corrections are made in pencil right before inking, so my roughs and finished inks often look pretty different.

This is the current state of the cover.  I'm actually going to do a fair amount of revising on it, since curves did an awful job of dropping the greys.

I was kinda ADD about working on the cover, jumping all over the place.

When I'm ready to start inking the logo, I begin by tightening it in pencil.

Outlining the letter...

And then filling it in.

I wanted to bulk up the stroke on the '13', but I don't trust myself to do it in pen, so I pencil it in first.

Now I'm ready to put in the subtitle.  I use a t-square and square up my paper (taping it down), and pull out my Aimes lettering guide.  It's set on 5.5.

I always pencil in my text first, so I can tweak the spacing.

I don't want the background to compete with the logo, but it'll look silly if the image just ends at the logo, so I fade it around.

Because the railing is the next closest thing to the reader, I'm going to work on inking that next.  Since its closest to us, the inked line needs to be big, so I outline it first and then fill it in.

Adding in texture to bring the railing even closer to the viewer and to differentiate it from the background.  Sorry for the image rotation, Blogger auto rotates when it feels like it.

Blogger is having trouble dealing with a post as large as this one, so please stay tuned for part II of 'When I was 13 Process'.