Anatomy of the cover- By Brian Stelfreeze

In the early 80s the fluid yet sketchy styles of Bart Forbes and Bernie Fuchs gave rise to a new breed of illustrators. I refer to them as the rubout guys. Led by Mark English and David Grove, these guys crafted a look that would eventually dominate book illustrations. Reckless spontaneity fused with powerful draftsmanship and overwhelming composition were the hallmarks of these masters of picture making. Their ranks would eventually grow to include Robert Hunt, Michael Dudash, and the explosive Kazuhiko Sano. What made their work interesting was not the craftsmanship behind the application of paint, but instead their technique was based on the removal of pigment.

That's the inspiration behind this Perfect Storm cover. I want to incorporate some of the rubout techniques to give this the feeling of an 80s spy/thriller paperback.

I'm quite pleased with the composition of this sketch, but the colors are way off. My plan is to go considerably warmer with the colors by building the color composition off of her bright red orange hair. I'd also like to go warmer with her expression. She should portray a confident sexy quality.

I'm using Strathmore regular surface heavyweight illustration board. It's adhered to a sheet of permanent self adhesive foam core. This technique uses a ton of water, so I'd like to avoid any buckling. I've also taped off the borders with 3M painters tape. This stuff can take a drenching and still hold a clean edge. Available at your local hardware store.
I want the drawing to show through to the end, so I'm going fairly heavy-handed, and I'm using Berol Verithin pencils. They are a lot like Prismacolor, but they are harder and hold up a little better under wet conditions.

I'm also starting to set up the permanent acrylic work. I will eventually do rubout work in the highlights, and for that I will need to use a non-permanent pigment like gouache, but I'm using fluid acrylics for those areas of the deep shadow.

I've given the board and light spray of workable fixative and ample time to dry. I got the area around the gun and the flashlight nice and wet. Then I washed in some indigo gouache. Working very quickly with Q-tips and paper towels, I removed the pigment that spilled outside the lines. If you're fast enough, you can pull things almost back to the absolute white of the board, but on most occasions you'll get a slight ghost. That ghost is what gives this technique its pebbled texture. I wait for everything to completely dry before pulling out the highlights on the gun and flashlight. It doesn't pull all the way to white, but it's bright enough to set up an additional wash later.

After I established the darks of the gun and flashlight I washed in the yellow and green to set up a base of the background and hair. I did this in acrylics because I didn't want the ability to pull things out too far in these areas. I'll eventually wash in darker values of gouache, but I will only be able to rub back to this base color.

A note about workable fixative. This stuff can quickly get to a point where it repels water, so I always add a flow improver to my water. Golden acrylics links something called flow release that's great for the task, or you can just add a few drops of isopropyl alcohol to your water. Be a little careful if you are using paper cups. Adding flow improver to your water will break those things down faster, and that can be a bad thing.

At this stage I'm just throwing the gouache down and letting it run. I'm trying to be cautious about overworking or scrubbing with the brush, so I spray the board with a misting bottle before laying in pigment. You can see here that I've already washed in some neutral blues and a purple on the gun and flashlight.

After rubbing out the lighter areas of my base flesh color, I'm starting to add deeper values and color.For portraits I always try to separate the face into three regions of color. It's like thinking of the colors on a traffic light. I try to go amber or a neutral yellow-orange on the region above the eyebrows. Then red for the region below the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose. And finally a greenish blue for the region below the nose. You can make the blue-green more obvious with guys, but it's a good idea to try to be subtle with the girls. This technique really turns the face in three dimensional space.

While the final red wash was still wet on her cheeks, I give it a light spray with the misting bottle. The atomized droplets of water disturbs the underlying wash just enough to give it that freckled look associated with redheads.After rubbing out the lighter areas of my base flesh color, I'm starting to add deeper values and color.

Here is as far as I'm going with the rubout work. Now I'll go back and fortify some of the shadows and clean up loose edges.

Here I printed out a top-secret FBI letter on a sheet of inkjet transparency film and transferred it to the board. It's an interesting but somewhat unpredictable procedure. Lay down a thin wash of acrylic gloss medium on the board and quickly lay in the printed transparency face down on the medium. After less than a minute, and if you got the mixture just right, it pulls the inkjet printing off the transparency film. The transfer is always slightly distressed, which is perfect for this situation.

It's not quite as obviously rubbed out as I initially thought, but I am both surprised and very pleased with the results. This technique is a constant combination of making a mess and cleaning it up, so you're only partially in control of the steering wheel. You have to collaborate with the procedure and allow it to go where it needs to. Sometimes when I'm at my luckiest it takes me to places like this.