Faithless Cover: WIP

Working on other projects between my dungeon delve piece and the pin-up piece (which I am considering redoing in a less comic fashion). A couple days ago my friend Jim Vargas asked me if I wouldn't mind being his booth babe at an upcoming convention. I have to dress up as his main comic book character Alish, who is an angel hybrid bounty hunter (what a mouth full!). 

So I took a look at his work and thought his character was pretty cool. And then....he asked if I wouldn't mind doing my own spin of her. 

Which lead to a late night doodle (or early morning) of a steampunk version of Alish which had really no purpose in life other than  being a neat doodlie. But I liked my sketch so much and wanted to do do something more with it, perhaps a portfolio piece. So....I decided to design a cover with her (as seen above). 

I used a copy of a cover that Jim did for the layout and tweaked it around a bit to fit my art a bit better. 

When that was done I focused on the actual artwork in laying in some grey tones. I like to use a slightly warm tinted grey in my work. This is working in favor of my plans to use violets as my darks in the color version. 

On a side note, I'm only just now learning through trial and error how to paint over my greytones. It's hard to do without the colors being so saturated but a friend suggested going slow into the colors like I would do traditional washes. So I am taking that bit of advice. 

I am a huge fan of pallets with violet, sienna, and yellow. I am still aware of Alish's character concept and the colors of her clothing: red corset, blue skirt. Since I am making this slightly steampunk I am planing on the metal bits to be brass and copper as opposed to the gold and silver scheme that Jim uses for her. 

Something I am hoping to convey in this as I go along is some atmosphere with the lighting. Working on the delve piece it's a struggle to use atmosphere for me, and I am thankful that someone has been helping me out with that piece. (Cough cough Diego cough)

Right now the image as stands is just the first color wash and I still have a ways to go on this, and then some with the treatment of the actual cover layout and type.