I have another new cover for Commando Comics out right now and my supporters can read all about the making of that cover at my Patreon website. Right here you can read about my third cover for the comic called ‘Cold Steel’. This post was originally created for my Patreon supporters back in January 2019 and I have decided not to update the text so it reflects my feelings and thoughts at the time.

Four Commando Comics are published every fortnight by DC Thomson & Co Ltd and you can find out more information about them and a free digital trial at their website: https://www.commandocomics.com

You can also buy this issue of Commando ‘Cold Steel’ digitally over at Comixology.

I went straight from one cover commission and onto the next which made me feel like I was hopefully getting to grips with what the Commando Team where after. Another cover with a cold theme (three winter paintings in a row) but this time we were travelling much further back in time to the Napoleonic Wars. The brief arrived mostly though a telephone conversation with the office and a large pile of reference indicating that they were… ‘looking for a movie poster feel with a big heroic stance to the fore and pure evil in the background.’

There was a lot going on in the script and rather than concentrating on one exact moment we wanted to create a cover that grasped many elements from the comic and summed up the overall story. I’ll not spoil the story for any potential readers but essentially you have a French Napoleonic Officer who torments and kills many of the people under his command leaving you set up for a classic revenge story.

So first things first was for a quick beginners crash course internet search on Napolean’s Grande Armee, the outfits (many and varied) and the burning of Moscow which is featured in the story. Even if I don’t need to know a great deal about an historical event to be able to illustrate something from it, it still helps to get the basic idea and potentially stop yourself from making a huge inaccurate mistake. I’m no military historian and certainly no expert on outfits of any time period (modern day included) so I have to balance what I can find online and in books I own with the art reference I am given by the client. I’m looking to compliment the work done by the interior artist and while I want to be as accurate as I can with the detail of an outfit I want it to look good and not be the deciding factor for the piece.

Referencing done, decisions made about what to have where and what to show from the story I settled down to create the rough layout for the cover. With the front cover being about the collection of characters I knew I had room to play with more background elements that would be appearing to the left hand side and on the back of the comic. The burning of Moscow and the winter theme were too hard to ignore and I had already envisaged a destroyed canon left in the snow. After pencilling the layout I scanned it in and quickly worked up a coloured version in Photoshop. As always this helps me get my initial colour scheme decided and helps the client get a better idea of how I’m going to paint the final image.

With the rough approved I moved onto pencilling the art, tidying up some loose elements and adding in some detail to the costume and outfits of the characters. As always I pencilled this reversed on tracing paper to help spot any balancing issues and to then transfer the work onto my art board of choice ready for painting.

Normally a section of a painting will stand out to me as the obvious starting point. Often this will be the main figure especially if there is a likeness or portrait involved. More often than not though I’ll find one section that I want to ‘nail down’ in order to feel like I’ll be fine for the rest of the painting. This cover was slightly different in that I could easily break up the overall painting into smaller sections like the main and support characters, the evil officer, burning Moscow, the canon etc and work on them pretty much separately from the overall whole. So that is how I approached it, tackling each section while being mindful of the desired effect I wanted from the finished painting.

With Clement and Jakob being shown in full body and therefore quite small overall my main concern for them was making sure that I still gave their faces and appearance a lot of character. It is obviously easier to paint a face with some amount of detail and expression at a larger size so I knew I wanted to spend as much time as I needed to get them right. Painting tiny hands holding intricate handled swords was also high on my ‘get it right Graeme’ list!

From there I moved onto painting their two comrades in arms Denis and Albert. I wanted them to be seen as separate from the current actions of Clement and Jakob and as they where involved in the past events link them into the background colour scheme of the burning of Moscow.

Speaking of fire what is not to enjoy about letting watercolour paint do its trick and paint some glorious vibrant flames below a smoked filled sky. Again internet searches of what Moscow would actually look like in that time period brought forth lots of paintings from the Napoleonic War and that era that helped me base the skyline on at least the right kind of buildings. With flames still in mind it was time to paint the bad guy Lussier into the image. Finally I added the ice beneath their feet and enjoyed adding the quiet little scene of the broken canon frozen in the snow. I think I enjoyed adding the snow and the stark blades of grass poking through the build up of snow just as much as painting the violent flames above.

With the painting finished I scanned in the piece and tidied up the image removing any dirty marks in Photoshop. I colour corrected some elements and took the time to smooth out the transition from Moscow to the canon removing some watermarking that had occurred. I also wanted the blades of the sabres to look a lot sharper, crisp and clean so I repainted the blades.

The work was supplied to the client and approved, another cover completed and now out in the shops to buy! Here’s the press release:

Commando 5193: Action and Adventure: Cold Steel

A coward and a bully, Colonel Jules Lussier seemed determined to break his own men in his quest for self gain.

Privates Clement, Albert, and Denis of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee would not only need to fight the enemy to make it through the war, but also endure relentless attacks and betrayal from their own leader. With the odds stacked against them, can the honourable comrades survive and claim victory over the dishonourable Colonel?

Will old scores be settled or will they suffer the icy bite of… COLD STEEL

Story: Jim and David Turner | Art: Muller & Klacik | Cover: Graeme Neil Reid

To celebrate my latest cover for Commando Comics being on the shelves here is a post looking at the creation of my second cover for the comic. This post was originally created for my Patreon supporters back in December 2018 and I have decided not to update the text so it reflects my feelings and thoughts at the time.

Four Commando Comics are published every fortnight by DC Thomson & Co Ltd and you can find out more information about them and a free digital trial at their website: https://www.commandocomics.com

You can also buy this issue of Commando ‘Ice-Cold Commando’ digitally over at Comixology.

There was a four month gap between being briefed my first Commando cover and the next. The gap seemed to widen when my first cover was printed and on the shelves without having received the next brief but thankfully back in September a new cover arrived. At that time it was titled ‘Winter Warriors’ and the brief was pretty straightforward with a few supplied visuals.

‘Daytime, Finland. Very snowy. Two German Ski soldiers fire at Len who is jumping over a crevasse. Len is a Commando so he’s in a Commando uniform and he’s scavenged the coat from a dead Russian Lieutenant. To make matters even more confusing, he’s scavenged a German MP 40.’

Having spent some time searching for various references, including your typical ski and ski poles used during WW2, I set about producing the rough that would let the Commando team see what I had in mind. I knew they wanted the character to be the main focus and that it needed to be a good action piece. Just as much for my own use as to show the editorial team I also worked up a colour version of the rough. This helps me make up my mind how I’m going to approach painting the work (and even in what medium) and also lets the the client get a good idea of what the final art will look like. Their only alteration at this point was to move the main figure more to the middle of the cover, an easy enough change and one I quickly changed on the colour rough and re-supplied for their approval.

As is my usual practice I then went onto pencilling a final version of the art but flipped onto tracing paper. As I’ve mentioned many times before flipping the art helps highlight any balancing issues. You can easily draw something like a face that when flipped looks odd and uneven, it is an easy way to spot your balancing mistakes and I recommend every artist should photograph or scan their work as they produce it and flip it to spot any potential mistakes before it’s too late. Also, as I pencil onto tracing paper it makes it much easier to then transfer the final pencils onto your art surface of choice.

Starting the painting I knew I wanted to tackle the overall background first and I also knew I’d be doing this in a mixture of watercolours and gouache. Many brilliant watercolorists can use the negative space left by masking the board to fantastic effect and if I was going to paint this purely in watercolours that is how I’d have approached doing the snow. However I wanted to use gouache for the snow and I started by painting in the mountain and trees in watercolour. The trees look like how I would paint them before the snow storm arrived and that is pretty much what happened.

I outlined a lot of the main character in watercolour in appropriate colour hues to how I was going to paint him. This acts almost as a barrier for the washes of paint I was about to add into the background. Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t stop paint from running over the lines but it does hinder them and with a bit of self control you can make life easier for yourself. All of the background hill and crevice were given a wash of watercolour and then gouache was added in afterwards. Several tones of grey/blue gouache were added as the snowfall on the trees and then a much lighter but not actual pure white was added mostly to the right hand side of the trees to indicate the strongest light source. The snow falling through the motion of the skiing character would be added near the end of painting.

I then painted in the main character and the two German Ski Troopers in watercolour making sure that their white coloured outfits were treated to a different greyish tone to separate them from the whites of the snow. Len’s stolen Russian winter coat was also treated to a brown/yellow hue to fit in with the mountains, the same golden glow right across the middle of the cover.

After finishing the painting the next stage was to scan it in and tidy up the file as it was. Again I knew from the beginning that I wanted to add a motion effect in Photoshop to give Len even more movement. Part of me regrets that some of the lovely snow covered trees became blurred but I think the effect added helps a lot with the action. 

The final art was supplied to the client for approval which, I’m pleased to say, was with much enthusiasm. Here is the press release for the comic which should be on the shelves from the 27th of December and for the next two weeks after.

Commando 5187: Home of Heroes – Ice-Cold Commando

Graeme Neil Reid returns for his second ever Commando cover! Fronting Jaume Forns’ icy interiors to ‘Ice-Cold Commando’, Reid’s cover leaps into action with Commando Lieutenant Ron Lamont’s escape across the frozen Russian wasteland. Get your woollies on, troops, it’s time to go skiing!

Story: George Low | Art: Jaume Forns | Cover: Graeme Neil Reid

It’s quite exciting that the press release makes a big deal of the cover art and for myself I’m excited that the story is by an ex-Editor of the Commando Comics range. I haven’t read the story yet myself so I plan to walk into town and hopefully see it on the shelves and buy myself a copy. If you can get a copy yourself please do and let social media know all about it, it helps me get more work from the team if they know folks like it!