NASCAR Heroes - Free Comic Book Day Cover Art (UPDATED)

There seems to be an automotive theme here lately! In keeping with two of my interests, cars and comics, I've been fortunate enough to be able to combine the two in my career. Here's the latest example:



This will be the cover to the Free Comic Book Day edition of NASCAR Heroes (follow the link for info about this comic series). Design, roughs, and layout by John Gallagher, finishing inks and colors on the figures by me, and the cars were rendered by Smiley Guys Studio.

I'll post some other new art soon, maybe even some non-automotive stuff! ;-) Also, more info soon on this year's Free Comic Book Day event. Watch this space! Thanks for keeping up with my work!

***UPDATE!***
I just received my copies of NASCAR Heroes #3, the issue that features the pencil art of the cars in the previous post. It's now out in stores, and you can get your copy by going to your local comic shop! If you're not sure where that is, click here: Comic Shop Locator. Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention about those illustrations: I drew them in pencil (an "F" pencil, if you're curious), and colorized them digitally in Adobe Photoshop. Here's an example of what the original pencils look like:



And just for fun, here's a preview of the page as it appears in the comic:



I hope you'll pick up both comics. I can tell you, from my copies of issue #3, the quality of the printing is excellent, and I'm really proud of the work. Thanks!

Best,
Rich

Cars

Well, my work schedule has been non-stop in the past month, and appropriately enough, befitting my pace lately, I've been drawing cars. Fast cars.

A colleague of mine recently hired me to draw a 1969 Chevy Chevelle for him. He had an assignment to do a movie poster, to be featured within an actual movie, and it required a car drawing. Now, my friend is an incredible artist, but really hates drawing cars. Anyone who knows me, knows that not only is drawing cars a specialty of mine, it's also one of the things I love doing. I was thrilled to work on this project, and am very happy with the result:



Immediately following this project, I was hired by Starbridge Media,the company doing NASCAR comic books to draw a short backup story about the inaugural Daytona 500. This was really cool on a few fronts. First, this is the 50th anniversary of the Daytona 500, and this comic will be available at the actual race. Second, the race itself was unbelievable, ending with an incredible photo finish! I won't reveal the results here, but it was one of the most exciting finishes in all of NASCAR's history. Third, not only was I able to draw the actual cars involved, but the story also required me to draw the drivers as well, so I got to do something else that is both a passion and a specialty, portrait illustrations. Last, as I was finishing the story it occurred to me that in my fifteen years working in comics, this was the first story I'd actually drawn (from layouts by John Gallagher), rather than inked. So, now that you've read this far, here are some of the images:













There's a pretty good chance that there will be more of these "History of NASCAR" stories, so hopefully, I'll have another opportunity for this type of work soon!

As always, I'll try to post some new art soon! Thanks for reading!

Best,
Rich