Styling superboy
Jorge on how a meme inspired this cover for Young Justice…
“This Superboy piece is quite recent. It marked the reappearance of this classic character in the new series Young Justice, and belongs to the collection of variant covers of issue #1. For me, the story was very funny and I wanted to take the opportunity to make the fans laugh too, basing the drawing on the famous meme of the couple in which the boyfriend stares at a passing young woman while his girlfriend looks at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief.
This piece is made entirely by me, including the colouring process. I wanted the composition to be similar to the meme, while reversing the roles of the characters so that Superboy becomes the protagonist. I made a very loose initial pencil drawing (1) to show my idea to the editors.
I polished it a little more (2), then laid down the digital ink (3), taking advantage of an effect that I’ve been using lately. This dry brush effect gives a slightly more realistic point to the volumes. On the ink version, I also included a separation with flat grey tones (4) to highlight the silhouettes of the characters.
Finally, in the colour phase (5), I wanted to work with relatively desaturated colours. This enabled me to highlight specific points of the image, such as the red tones.
At an aesthetic level, one of the things that I enjoy most is looking at current fashions and how people dress. So I put the couple in clothing that’s similar to the models in the catalogue of a well-known clothing store. Whenever I can, I look for elements that help connect an image with reality and with the people who see it.”