2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Owl Eyes on Wrath… Richard Elson on Prog 2354
18th October 2023
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!
This week, it’s all eyes on Wrath from the fabulous fantasy fable, Feral & Foe. Is Wrath about to get bored to death in the latest adventure, Bad Godesberg? Well, that’s what the Owlbores do… but you’ll have to pick up 2000 AD Prog 2354 to find out!
But if you want to find out just how series artist, Richard Elson put together another great-looking cover, all you have to do is read on…
Elson’s been a mainstay of the comics industry for many years now, whether it’s Sonic the Comic or his 2000 AD work, including Atavar and Kingdom with Dan Abnett, But his work here on Feral & Foe, again with Abnett, really is looking soooo fine!
Now, over to Richard to tell us all about this latest 2000 AD cover, all starting with four roughs to send to Tharg for approval…
RICHARD ELSON: As usual, I did 4 rough ideas for the cover. The second one was chosen so it was just a matter of scaling that up and tightening the pencils in preparation for the inks.
I inked on several layers: one for the owl, one for the swirl, one for Wrath, and one for the hair chains.
As usual, Wrath’s hair probably took as long to ink as the rest of the image combined. I think I might have to introduce her to some chain cutters before we do any more F&F!
The owl and swirl were inked on different layers to make the process of applying colour holds to the linework less tricky.
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It was a relatively straightforward colouring job. There are some pretty busy scenes in this series and not having to choreograph multiple figures for this cover was something of a relief.
As always, it has been great fun working with Dan on these episodes. To date, I think Bad Godesberg might be the most ambitious thing we’ve worked on together; I hope the readers get as much enjoyment out of it as I did.
Yes, Bad Godesberg is another fabulously funny fantasy from Abnett and Elson and that’s just the latest great cover Richard’s given us.
You can find 2000 AD Prog 2354 everywhere that stocks your weekly dose of Ghafflebette comics, including the 2000 AD web shop from 18 October.
To see more of those great Feral & Foe covers and read about how he made them, get clicking on these – Prog 2163, Prog 2192, and Prog 2227, And for even more, we interviewed Richard and Dan about Feral & Foe here and for your listening pleasure, Richard talked to the 2000 AD Thrill Cast in 2019 here.