BARNEY

JUDGE DEATH 

BY FRAZER IRVING

Initial sketch, a very simple idea of death plunging hands thru the head of some poor sucker.
This changed and became a more rounded idea. I took the two main characters from that episode and put them on the front as death's victims. The composition was simple, and I had this idea of all of death's former victims being in a set of circles in the background. This sketch was okay'd by Tharg luckily, as I was on a tight schedule...
Here I'd moved the drawing onto the textured background and drawn onto it some more to refine some details and add weight. Death's head here has changed angle to appear more menacing, and I've added some darker tones to take the place of the shadows in the art.
This is the first bit of paint to go on. I didn't have that much of an idea of the colour scheme, but I knew I wanted to simulate thick, vibrant brush marks.
The second paint layer. I knew that the colours had to be different, but I'd also decided on a dual light source on death so I needed to play around with it a bit...
Here I've added the second layer to death, covering up the sketch and bringing in the second light source.
This is where I painted death's face in. I knew that all I wanted was the highlights of his visor and teeth to show, almost like he was appearing out of shadow, like a ghost...
I filled the background in with a flat colour, and found that I liked it very much. It looked very much to me like death was rising from some cold underworld to claim the souls of these 2 sinners. It had a very still yet tense air to it, and I liked it a lot.
Here I added the faces on a new layer. I was going to stick to my plan even tho I preferred the flat colour version. Some of these faces are of characters I created, some of them are of my friends and the rest are kinda generic. The plan was to have death as the ghost being haunted by his own ghosts...but clearly he doesn't give a shit...
Here I added the white to bring out the faces and backlight death. With this cover I tried to achieve a very pulpy feel to the art, a trashy painted idea with some extreme visuals. Working on the computer allowed me to make some mistakes so that I could pursue this idea thru to the end, and after a day of painting it came together. My fave cover of the past year:)
This idea was simple. The strip had death taking polaroids of his victims, so I thought it'd be cool to homage the brian bolland Killing Joke cover seeing as they do similar things...and the bolland connection with judge death as well. What I did here was trace the layout on the computer and then change proportions and details to suit my style.
This is the inked version. I tried to mimic certain bolland lines in places and contrast them with distinctive Irving lines, such as on the helmet.
The final version. Muted colours are tricky, but it was need for this image. The battered camera is intentional, considering the activities of the folks who own it...