Hellblazer 25 Cover

This is the cover of the second part of a two-part, politically-charged, Hellblazer story I did with Grant Morrison which is all about a town going crazy, amongst other things. Margaret Thatcher made a cameo appearance in it...
I liked doing covers at the time, but I was rarely asked to do such things unless they were for the covers of a story I was working on. I think there was a general love of what I tend to call ' real ' painting at the major publishers then - acrylics and oils, which have the kind of opacity and depth that looks like the stuff of the old masters rather than the paint-box. I liked - and still do - the transparency and easy-to-control factor of water-colour in it's various incarnations. I'd duplicated acrylic-style effects on things like Night Raven : House Of Cards, by simply adding body colour to the palette, but I only used such effects if I thought they would give me something particular I needed. In the general run of things, I'd always use water-colour first to see if it would do the job for me. I guess I'm attracted to the idea of minimalism in more than just drawing-style in this regard.
Loved doing this cover. Particularly pleased myself with the colour of the night sky, which looked brilliant against the light of the lamp and brings it out really well. I'll be putting some of the interior art from this book up here as well, shortly. It was a book I had a very relaxed and experimental time on, using marker pens for almost all of it on top of very rough pecil layouts. It was a risk - but what's life without a risk?

Original art for this image available for sale at CadenceComicArt.com