Sunday, November 1, 2009

A very old commission sketch

This must have been drawn back in the mid-eighties.  I found a scan of the finished piece online at Comicartfans and I'll include it here for comparison.  The sketch has been hidden away for a couple of decades in my files which could really use some sorting out. Eric Delos Santos appears to be the current owner of the finished piece but I don't think he was the original commissioner.  Are you out there Eric?


Update:  Here's another prelim for the same commission.  I don't know why I started over instead of just adding the shadows to this one.  Weird.








8 comments:

  1. Neat! Kinda has a Tim Sale vibe. Dig the background silhouettes.

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  2. Hi Kevin! Hiro Morisaki sent me a link to this post, so I thought I'd just chime in to answer your question (especially seeing as how you mention me by name). Anyway, you are correct. I am not the original commissioner. I purchased this piece from Glen Danzig back in 1992 at SDCC. Unfortunately, I never even thought to ask him about it. I knew he was a huge fan of yours and I was just excited to be able to pry a nice Nowlan piece off him. Hope that info helps. Thanks so much for featuring the piece and also for mentioning me along with it. Best, Eric Delos Santos

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  3. That is a cool drawing. Love the looseness in the pencil rough. What is shows though is that, great though it is, your inking is in a whole other ball-park now.

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  4. Thanks Kheang and Alan! And thanks to Eric as well. I'm sure I didn't draw it for Danzig originally (I would have remembered) but this thing has been around so long it's probably had several owners.

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  5. Hey, Kevin! Nice piece. Got my sketchbook in the mail on Saturday, and love it, love it, love it! Thanks for the pencil sketch on the back, too!
    Question: how uber-geeky is it to save the the envelope the book came in? Just cause Kevin Nowlan wrote my name? Crap, never mind, i just answered my own question...

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  6. Kevin,

    How did you ink this one? Do you remember? Just seems like the rendering on this was a touch different. I know it is older stuff so maybe that is the true reasoning. Just the inking on the background and the concrete, cape, etc. looks more pen rendered.

    Always great to see this old stuff.

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  7. This is great to see. I first discovered Mr Nowlan's artwork by finding some old Moon Knight issues from the late 80's-early 90's and the inking on this piece reminds me a little bit of the same feel. What fun.

    I also liked how the background changed from sketch 1 to sketch 2. In the final the background is much more interesting than originally planned in sketch #1...maybe even more interesting than the Batman! :)

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  8. Rafael, it's not too geeky for me. I kept a Geof Darrow envelope because he'd drawn a little self portrait on it.

    Patrick, I probably inked it with a bowl-point pen which I stopped using after a few years. It wasn't as flexible as a Hunt 102 but it was great for those scribbly old buildings.

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