pencils and inks by Joe Weems
Back in mid 2011 I coloured some of the lineart that Joe Weems has in his gallery here on DA for fun. Namely a 'Hex The Lost Tribe' pinup and his 'Planet of the Apes' cover. He liked it so much he asked me if I'd like to give a Darkness cover that he was in the process of drawing as a personal project a go when it was ready. He also said that he'd be showing it to his Topcow editor and pushing for it to be the cover to a Darkness issue (the lineart, not necessarily my colours on it...)
Jump forward to April 2012. Joe emails me the final high res inks and says "Give it a shot and I'll show your colours to his Topcow editor (Filip) as well but in the meantime DON'T SHOW IT TO ANYBODY!!!...because it might be used for Darkness #101"
Dropping everything that I was currently colouring at the time I set to this straight away trying not to have a nervous breakdown at the same time. The biggest stumbling point turned out to be what colour to do the background and after a few screenshots of various combinations sent to Joe, we settled on this orange scheme.
Fired the finished piece off to Joe inside the deadline he'd given me and we duly waited for Topcow's reaction... It was 'supposedly' meant for Darkness Issue 101 but that cover came and went with a much different Silvestri drawing on the front and Joe said to me "They may use it for a variant or a cover on another issue" so just wait and see...
Well anyway, Joe has now posted high inks of this one to his own gallery and given me the go ahead to post these colours so I guess it's not going to happen now. Ahh well... at least a topline Topcow editor got to see something I'd done... c'est la vie..
Part 2...
A few days after I sent my orange version of this Darkness cover to Joe, he tells me they'd asked JJ Kirby to give it a shot on the colours as well. Joe also sent me a sneak preview copy of JJ's colours and said "See what you can do with yours now."
So I got back into my version, ditched the orange theme and using JJ's a cue redid my colours to match somewhat and fired it back off the Joe.
Personally I think that my colouring style is a little more refined on the detail than JJ's so this matches his colour scheme but still has my methodology to it overall. Not to worry though because as I said in the orange version that I originally did it looks like they're not going to use it anytime soon and if they do it'll probably be JJ's colours anyway...
Well, at least I gave it a shot... *sigh*
cheers
Sean
Darkness cover
