In my last blog post I showed off the pulp fic­tion and grind­house cin­ema influ­ences behind the Deep Pen­i­ten­tiary 6 cover. How­ever, it takes a skilled artist to take the con­cept and bring it to life. For this project I chose Diego Galindo after glimps­ing his rip­ping cover for issue 4 of the comic Nancy in Hell on Earth. I was extremely for­tu­nate that he agreed to work with me and Shane Crash on the cov­ers to our pulp-inspired split-paperback. (Check out our Kick­starter for the book!)

Today I thought it would be inter­est­ing to fol­low Diego as he works from a quick sketch to the final Deep Pen­i­ten­tiary 6 art.

It starts with a rough thumb­nail sketch like this as we lock down the ele­ments as they will appear on the cover.  At this stage we have the main char­ac­ters, Theta But­ter­fly, Honey Bee, and the Dark Mother in place.

The thumb­nail sketch is fur­ther refined. The back­ground planet is changed to the moon and the tit­u­lar space station-prison is added.  While all of the ele­ments are in place, the artist and I agreed that the char­ac­ters’ posi­tion­ing was too stiff.

It was back to the draw­ing board, lit­er­ally,  as the artist reposed the char­ac­ters giv­ing a more dynamic shot fit­ting for the action of the story.

This is fur­ther refined and def­i­n­i­tion is added. Honey Bee is reposed again and given a sec­ond gun. At this point we are almost there, but I didn’t like the addi­tion of boots, pre­fer­ring to keep my women bare­foot like the Big Doll House poster I’m riff­ing on.

Next the draw­ing is fur­ther defined and color is added. Here is Diego’s final art­work, a pul­sat­ing pulp art mas­ter­piece!  By sup­port­ing my Kick­starter you’ll not only be help­ing me get the Deep Pen­i­ten­tiary 6 printed, you’ll be sup­port­ing artists Diego. We are just a few hun­dred dol­lars away from mak­ing our goal. Every lit­tle bit helps!