2000 AD Covers Uncovered – Tiernen Trevallion’s Vampire Constanta Extravaganza for 2000 AD Prog 2276

Every week, 2000 AD brings you the galaxy’s greatest artwork and 2000 AD Covers Uncovered takes you behind-the-scenes with the headline artists responsible for our top cover art – join bloggers Richard Bruton and Pete Wells as they uncover the greatest covers from 2000 AD!

Borag Thungg Earthlets and welcome to the splendour that is the latest cover work on 2000 AD Prog 2276 from the over-worked circuits of the art droid behind Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963, Tiernen Trevallion!

Right now, Tiernen’s right in the middle of drawing the finale to this latest Fiends of the Eastern Front thriller, 1963, set deep in the heart of cold war Berlin, where the vampire Constanta has already found himself in big, big trouble at the hands (and the sword) of Baba Yaga.

Both Tiernen and writer Ian Edginton have really outdone themselves in their continuing exploration of the blood-red history of the vampire Constanta across the ages, and Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963 is just the latest series to follow in the blood-drenched footsteps of the character created back in 1980 for 2000 AD Progs 152-161 by Gerry Finley-Day and the legendary Carlos Ezquerra.

However, Tiernen has to send his apologies to all you readers again – after being so overwhelmed with deadlines that he couldn’t get things together for his cold war collection of beauty that was the cover to 2000 AD Prog 2273, he sends even more apologies this time round as he’s currently being whipped into shape by Tharg’s specialist art-droid encouragement squad of trained professional torturers mentors to get the final pages of Fiends: 1963 done and dusted. But he did manage to send across a few pieces of art for your delectation and delight, along with these short explanation…

‘I’m afraid I really don’t keep much in the way of WIP’s… but here’s pencils, inks and colour. Put simply, each of the elements are inked on separate layers, then the background and each foreground elements are blocked in separately in colour… I usually very roughly drop in patches of colour to test, then work it up from there, adding shade and light as I go.’

All of which means this… Tiernen goes from pencils…

… to inks…

… to adding colours…

And once that’s all done, you have a damn fine cover showing us all that Constanta’s up against this time round in the snow of Berlin for Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963.

And with that, the whip cracks again and Tiernen’s back to work!

Thanks to Tiernen Trevallion for sending that work through – you can see the finished cover on the front of 2000 AD Prog 2276, out on 6 April and available everywhere the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop.