-By Dan dos Santos

As many of you know, I recently finished up a series of covers for Dark Horse Comics’ “Serenity: Leaves on the Wind”. The last issue of the series, #6, just went on the stands this past month.

I’m a big Firefly fan, so it was a really fun project to work on, and I’m actually kind of sad to see it end. Disappointment aside, it is really nice to be able to step back from any long term project and see the fruits of your labor as a collective whole. There are of course things I would change, but overall I’m quite happy with the way these covers look as a series.

Having 6 different covers to play with, meant the Editor and I could give each of the characters their own time in the spotlight, rather than just focusing on the leading man.

I started the series off working tradtionally. The first two covers are all oil paints. On the third cover I experimented with some acrylic airbrush and colored pencil techniques, which I loved! (More on that in the near future).

The fourth cover was a mixture of tons of different of mediums, mostly due to frustration and my ineptness. I spent a lot of time repainting Kaylee’s face, over and over, trying to get the likeness just right. The real trouble is, I was trying to give her a tough expression, and that character just doesn’t make that type of expression, so it always looked wrong.

I finally got it right (I think), but having spent so much time revising the painting, I was really starting to fall behind schedule. So, to save time the fifth and sixth covers were done entirely in Photoshop.