I’ve been asked by two or three different people how I did this cover (heck if I know why, as it’s one of the least remarkable of my covers), so I thought I’d post a little behind-the-scenes background on it.

First, it wasn’t an easy cover. It took at least three drafts before I got a final approval on it, and I generally pride myself on being the sort of artist that gets it right in one draft.

So the original scrap displayed here…

…looks nothing at all like the final. Look closely, and you’ll notice that the heads of the models don’t match, but the bodies are the same.

Anyway, the guy on the right side of the cover (left side of the scrap diagram) happened to be wearing exactly the sort of thing the character wears, so that’s how I ended up using the photo. I flipped him over and, because he didn’t match the lighting of the other guy and the background, did a little bit of painting to get him to match the lighting. I also gave him a new set of eyes, made green, and I flipped those over too, so that he was looking straight into the “camera” instead of at some vague nowhere.

Then I sent the first draft to Allie…

…which didn’t get the okay because I’d gotten the two characters confused. The one wearing the sweater was supposed to be blondish, and the one wearing the leather jacket was supposed to be dark-haired.

Okay. Stupid me. On to the draft two.

I found some potential heads…

…but the one on the left, while in the perfect position and pose for the guy in the leather jacket, was completely wrong for the lighting. So I decided to simply darken the original guy’s hair. The head on the right, on the other hand, seemed to work just fine for the guy in the sweater.

So I sent the second draft in…

…and again didn’t get the okay. I can’t remember the reasons why. Probably the hair on one of them was too short, or one of the guys just wasn’t sexy enough. I don’t really know any more. All I really care about when doing this kind of work is whether or not the parts and pieces look like they belong in the bigger whole. Everyone else can worry about whether a model is sexy enough or not. It’s all personal opinion, anyway. I just want to fool the techies and the eagle eyes … and maybe capture the attention of the National Enquirer‘s art department. (Yeah, right.)

Anyway, so I got a couple more new heads for the guy in the leather jacket and worked on the cover some more.

I ended up not using the head on the left—probably because he was a little too clean cut and he’s supposed to look a little scruffy. That, or probably because his face was too straight on, and he’d look like he had a disconnected neck if I placed that head on the turned away body. So instead, I used the head on the right and darkened his hair a little.

As for the guy in the sweater…

…I found this head for him, which actually belonged to the same model. Yes, the very same model—like they’re twins! It was the perfect lighting, though, so I didn’t care. I slapped that face on and added some grain so that it matched the rest of the final image.

But yes, look…

…the approved final ended up with one guy depicting both characters. Imagine Heath Ledger playing both parts in Brokeback Mountain. That’s essentially what we have here in this cover. Self, I don’t know how to quit you!

I wonder now if that’s why people kept asking me about how I did this cover.

But anyway, that’s how I laid this ghost to rest—three drafts and a whole lot of head hopping and head slapping, all of which gave me a headache.

Next time, a behind-the-scenes on one of my cartoon covers, one that went up to seven, yes seven, drafts. Maybe even eight.

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