2000 AD Covers Uncovered: Tom Foster cracks out the paints for a fiendishly pulpy cover for Prog 2310
30th November 2022
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, art droid Tom Foster gives us a Western with a bite – as we welcome back the Vampire Constanta in Fiends of the Western Front: Wilde West, a prologue episode introducing the series that begins in 2023.
Fiends of the Western Front has seen Constanta in many different times and many different places. But this new series, Wilde West, takes him way out west, to Nebraska in 1882, where a certain Mr Oscar Wilde is having problems with a wraith. Wilde West sees Ian Edginton returning to chronicle the life and times of the vamp created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra back in 1980. He’s joined for this particular western vampire tale by Warren Pleece.
But it’s Tom Foster introducing the strip to us, on a pulp-infused cover to catch your on the stands from 30 November…
TOM FOSTER: Well, this is a first for me. November’s Judge Dredd Megazine represents my first Meg cover and, for a brief window, I’m on both the Prog and Meg covers at the same time.
As such, I’ve purposely designed these two covers so that, if you place them next to each other and unfocus your eyes, you get a secret subliminal message that will allow me to access your subconscious remotely at a time of my choosing. I can’t really reveal any more than that, but suffice it to say that a certain Estonian ambassador to Equatorial Guinea might not want to make any long-term plans.
Anyway, forget all of that immediately and let’s focus instead on the process for creating the cover for Prog 2310.
You may notice that this is my first fully-painted work for 2000AD. I’ve painted a few Commando covers over the years (with mixed results), but it wasn’t until I tried soft-body acrylics that I really felt I could get my painted work up to a standard that might match my usual inks-and-colours approach.
This assignment seemed perfect for a painting, with its pulpy themes of vampires and the wild west, so I decided to risk it and crack out the paints.
As usual, I had to submit a rough to Tharg and, since the composition was so straightforward (and had been suggested by The Mighty One himself), I went straight to a pencil sketch without doing a full 3-D render…
I may have compiled some of my reference at this stage, I can’t quite remember, but I figured getting some indication of Constanta’s expression was more important than establishing lighting and colours. This one is all about character, and poseable 3-D models usually don’t communicate that as well as a pencil sketch.
Since there are so few elements depicted in this one, I could really afford to compile a fair bit of reference for the central character. I did a quick Daz render for lighting and pose composition; used a 3-D head model in Anatomy 360 for some nice grizzled facial details; took a couple of photos of myself; and looked at as many images of Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp in Tombstone as I could find…
With my reference squadron assembled, I set about doing a detailed pencil drawing. Knowing that I was planning on painting this piece, rather than inking it, I approached the pencils a little differently from usual.
Rather than worrying too much about line quality, I tried to make this more of a value study, establishing the different tones that would make up the final image in pencil, so that I could refer to them during the painting process.
With my pencils complete I then did a few Photoshop fixes, added a bit of digital colour and mocked it up with the 2000AD trade dress to try and get an idea of my palette and how the finished article might look.
From here, I printed out my pencils, transferred the most important outlines onto claybord with tracedown paper, and went over them with Sharpie and biro so that I had a solid line-drawing to paint over.
I started out my paints with a midtone wash of burnt sienna, then worked in some details in the face and hands and blocked in some of the larger areas of colour. You can still see my first wash and line drawing here on Costanta’s shirt and tie.
Then came hours of rendering – doing my best to add as much dimension and contrast as possible. It was at this stage that my inexperience as a painter was brought into sharp relief. I over-rendered everything and my colours got way too dark.
The lights in my studio aren’t all that great, so what looked okay in artificial light, often looked muddy and rubbish in the cold light of day. On top of that, my painting surface was getting uneven and lumpy from all the applications of paint. I panicked and considered restarting the painting.
I was relieved to find that a fine-grain sandpaper, liberally applied over the whole painting, had a remarkable restorative effect, not only to the smoothness of the painting surface, but also the lightness of the colour. This served also to soften my over-rendering and I got a second chance to try and salvage the painting.
I touched up a few areas and found myself with an over-all effect that seemed to work. The details however, were still a bit rough.
So, once again, I set about rendering the surfaces and adding detail. But, once again, I was too heavy-handed. Taking these process shots proved invaluable for remedying mistakes, as I was able to refer to earlier stages which seemed to work better.
Finally, I managed to get something that, while not perfect, did not immediately present me with obvious flaws. I got a better-quality scan done and sent it off to Tharg for approval.
I was very nervous about this one, knowing that my inexperience with the medium might be blinding me to a lot of problems that a more practiced eye would notice right away. Thankfully, The Mighty One’s benevolence shone down on me and I was not cast into the Nerve Centre’s Rotary Pulper of the Damned. In the end, I think it does the job, but I definitely need more painting practice to get the results I’m after.
Thanks so much to Tom for talking to us and for yet another great cover. You can find 2000 AD Prog 2310 wherever you pick up your weekly dose of the Galaxy’s Greatest, including the 2000 AD web shop.
For more from Tom here at 2000AD.com, check out his Covers Uncovered features for 2000 AD Progs 1986, 2225, and 2281. And this month, he’s also provided the cover to Megazine issue 450 – you can see the Covers Uncovered for that here. He talks about winning the 2013 Thought Bubble talent search here and the Judge Dredd: A Penitent Man strip here.
You can hear him talk on the 2000 AD Thrill-Cast Lockdown Tapes here. And finally, there’s his ridiculously funny From The Drawing Board video here – the one that basically meant the other art droids stopped doing them as none of them could match Tom’s delivery!
