Alison Sampson is a power-house. She’s a fully qualified architect turned incredible comic book artist and illustrator who systematically blows my mind away with her work. She’s a left brain-right brain dream: an analytic mind combined with a formidable instinct. She also has a wonderful ability to break down her process and an extensive knowledge of Art History, making her an ideal guest for our new recurring Behind The Love: The Cover Series.
Enjoy some wise words, by Alison Sampson about her virgin cover for Love Everlasting #2…
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When Elsa asked if I'd like to make a cover for Love Everlasting, the Yes went back with a question. Would the Love Everlasting team like me to do one of the 'playing card' covers I've done for some other people? And if I could do that, could I draw the Queen of Hearts? Issue two would be set in the 1920s- so how to make a period representative Queen of Love? There is a bit that goes into making these 'house cards'
You have to knit an image with its 180 degree turned counterpart. This is instrumental in building up the composition. The card is decorative in some manner (how?). And then- the Queen is a solitary role. How to make the Queen representative of love when she is on her own? The answer was easy and it also would help describe the period we were in.
I'd put her on the phone, a flirtatious spider at the centre of her web of lovers and confidantes, holding a candlestick phone with a trumpet earpiece. Who knows what she might be saying, and to whom? This was a Queen of Hearts for the modern age. In this instance, I looked at a few other ideas, but it became clear that I wasn't going to have a better one, if it was a playing card cover I was doing. Add another person and the whole thing becomes seriously complicated. The queen has to remain a Queen, and if I kept her lovers off the page I could concentrate on her.
So what would this cover look like? I wanted to give it allusions of the period without making it an actual pastiche ... So what would that be? I didn't want to touch Klimt or Art Nouveau, both of which I have recent covers referencing (for Golden Rage and Department of Truth, respectively), and... what else did I know? Maybe Erte would give me a help out?
There's a lot to like there- interesting relationships, weirdly up-to-date designs, and gorgeous colours. but nothing really came even close to being useful for a playing card. There was all manner of types of love there but not the thing I was looking for- it very decorative, but was too distant, not emotional enough and having a phone in there wasn't going to work.
While I was thinking about this, I built up the art for the card and draw the Queen herself.
The phone I kept relatively simple, and left the dial off so the eye wasn't drawn away from her face. Was that a right decision? Would readers today know what it was she was doing? And how to get her face to look flirtatious and keep it that way when I coloured it? What should she wear? What should she look like? That was relatively straightforward- the hard part was getting the rest of it to feel right.
Enter Jose Carlos (a Brazilian artist working in his own form of the Art Deco style at the same time as Erte), who brought our colour palette and design inspiration.
I could do something with the phone cord making spaces. I tried to use the colours he had in a different way. Does it work? Do I have the right combination of flat and painted? Are the colours right? Should I just make it pink and purple and gold and step away? Does it look contemporary enough? Is the figure sufficiently articulated? Should I have made it wilder? Does it do what we want it to do? If we zoom right out does it still look like something? At the end of the day, you need the cover to get the book to jump off the shelf amidst a sea of superhero muscles. That is its purpose. I could probably go back and make more tweaks- and the situation I was in at the time this was done- I was having daily radiation treatments for cancer, and my time on the piece kept getting broken up allowed me to keep seeing it with new eyes. Which is not all that helpful when you are trying to finish something.
So here it is, my Art Deco by way of Brazil Queen of Hearts from the 1920s, a flirt in red satin at the centre of the web she has woven.
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Elsa again, to thank Alison for her beautiful cover and for taking the time to write this extensive post. Fyi, we were both live on Instagram earlier, and you can still check our chat!
A quick reminder that you can pre-order her variant cover B for Love Everlasting #2 until Monday August 22 with the Diamond Code JUL220218.
Much love,
Elsa
Lovely cover and illuminative essay.
Alison- I love your & Jose’s choice of color! Who are some of your favorite colorists working today? I adore Brian Stelfreeze, Doc Shaner, and Matheus Lopes’ (another Brazilian artist) work.
Elsa- You and Tom asked the audience to post suggestions for Tom’s 50 sketches last weekend during the Q&A. I wasn’t sure where to post them, so here’s some:
-Kevin Eastman & Tom in the foreground, one on each half of the paper. Eastman with Kirby crackle & a New God or two in the background behind him, saying, “I’m so excited to do big Kirby action! What did you have in mind for this issue, Tom?” King, with a mostly empty background behind him except for a door and a robot waving, saying, “Uh, well I was thinking we’d have Kamandi in a small room with one door fighting a robot, surrounded by Dr. Seuss characters?”
-Batman & Doc Shaner compete in a trombone contest, judged by Superman, Shazam, Wildcat & Black Canary
-Some villain has Mitch Gerads & a bearded Batman trapped in an Onion-themed death trap.
-Lobo (with space dolphins) & some Prophets and heroes from the Old Testament, Lobo bragging about saving the space dolphins
-Batman & Magnum P.I. fight Clayface in Florida
-Batman, Lee Weeks and Jesus compare Robins & Apostles
-The Question tries to explain Ayn Rand to Booster Gold, while Booster tries to convince The Question to buy stock in Booster’s Bagels
-Sergeant Rock & Nick Fury argue about whether being portrayed by Sam L Jackson or having comic pages in the soon-to-be-opened National Capital Jewish Museum is cooler.
-Batman arrives in Iraq, declares himself the new Sheriff of Babylon, and tells everybody he’s got this.
-Matches Malone (definitely not Batman) & Plastic Man take acting classes from Elsa