Ross Hughes Colors Stuff!!!

**RHughes** · 09-28-2010, 07:34 AM

Wow. Okay, so it's been three years since I've been able to post on this board. Some kind of glitch or something would allow me to log in, but I couldn't post anything. Seems to be straightened out now, so lets get right to it!!!!!

For those of you that don't know me (of which I'm sure accounts for 99.5% of the boards memebership

), I have been a freelance colorist for about 5 years now. I'm not shy, and my skin is thick, so I definitely encourage any discussion and constructive criticism on my work. Feel free to jump in and let me know what you like and what you don't.

I'll start off with a few of my more recent pics and then follow up a little later with some others.

This is the cover to Batman and Robin #6 Jonathon Glapion was kind enough to send me a few pages to color for my portfolio, which I will be getting to in the next week or two.

Pencils by Philip Tan
Inks by Jonathon Glapion

This is a pin-up done for a Hi-Fi Colors coloring contest. It was one of four different pin-ups chosen to be featured at SDCC this year. This worked out nicely since I was planning on coloring this for Matt anyway, and I noticed that it was being used as one of the entries in the contest.

Lines by Matt Zolman

Ah...Supergirl. I love a good Supergirl drawing. It's not often that you find one that isn't blatantly trying to look up her skirt. This was a commission for Penciljack's own Eric Henson and was going to be used as a birthday card.

Pencils by Eric Henson

I've also been working on a bunch of Sniper and Rook covers for my buddy, John Meytch. Here are a couple of the more recent ones that were on display at Chicago Comic Con. I've got a few more that I have to keep under wraps and I've been trying to peer pressure John into letting me show them off before the books are ready.

He's not budging yet, but I'll keep at it......

Pencils by Marat Mychaels
Inks by Mikey Babinski

Pencils by Ben Jones
Inks by Mikey Babinski

A couple more and then I'll take a little break and come back a little later with some more. These are the last two pieces I worked on before I started a wife-forced two week coloring vacation.

Another commission for Eric. I must admit that the planet in this one WAS supposed to be Earth and we're looking down at the north pole area. I didn't recognize it (having never been there myself....

) and played it safe and went with an alien planet. Eric liked it though, and I think the red planet offers a nice contrast to GL's cooler colors, so it's an alien planet. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Lines by Eric Henson

And last, this is a poster for a book called Apparitions from Papercut Publications. I don't know if I was just burned out or what, but I was really struggling with this one for a while. The characters color scheme's were very specific, and as you can tell, mostly comprised of dark greys. Fitting them in with a dark background and still having them be easily readable was a bit of a challenge. In the end, I decided to surround them in smoke/mist to help break them away from the dark background. It went over well with the publisher, so it all worked out.

Penicls by Chris Vance

**Eric Henson** · 09-28-2010, 05:45 PM

Nice work Ross! Glad to see you on PJ, Buddy-ol-pal!!!

**RHughes** · 09-29-2010, 06:45 AM

I'm just happy to be able to post again! LOL

**RHughes** · 09-29-2010, 07:23 AM

Time to toss a couple more images up. C&C's always encouraged!

These are a couple of pages from a book called I Was A Teenage Vigilante.

Pencils by Victor Lopez
Not sure who did the inks.

Waaaaaaaay back in the day, one of the first tiles I worked on was doing greyscales for a book called Wannabez about a group of people who believe that they were given superpowers from a falling meteor storm. The book was great fun, but I always felt it needed to be done in color. Fast forward a few years and the publisher decides to have the greyscales colored and asks me how hard it would be to just colorize what's already there. Well, I wouldn't hear of it. I had learned a LOT in those years and my style evolved to the point where I thought it was kind of difficult to look back at those pages. LOL I said I wanted to start from scratch and color them from the ground up. Here are a couple of those pages and the cover (which even though was originally done in color, I decided to rework as well).

Lines by Scott Simmons

These are a couple of pin-ups I did for fun/portfolio.

Pencils by Ed McGuinness
Inks by Dexter Vines

Pencils by Jim Cheung
Inks by Mark Morales

Saw my buddy MEK post this and told him that he HAD to send it to me.

Lines by Michael Kassinger

And I'll end this post with a couple more commissions I did with Eric.

Lines by Eric Henson

**RHughes** · 10-01-2010, 07:19 AM

This is a commission I had done for my wife. We're big fans of Sweeney Todd. If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it, and when/if the play comes to Houston, we're totally there. My Fallen Justice compatriot Harold Edge just knocked this out of the park for me.

Lines by Harold Edge

Turnabout was fair play, so he asked if I would color a couple things for him to give out as Christmas presents.

Lines by Harold Edge

And while I'm on a Harold kick, here are some other things we worked on together for Fallen Justice. Let me just say, that this guy's art is truly amazing. I miss the days when an artist on a major title was given the freedom to develop their own style. Nowadays it seems like photo-realism has taken over and everything looks so cookie-cutter. There are some great artists out there doing it, but I've always liked the slightly quirky artists better. Harold's art is just so much fun and is filled with a ton of energy.

Lines by Harold Edge

The final page of Fallen Justice. Want to know what the censored part is? Well you'll have to go out and pick up Fallen Justice from Red Handed Studios to find out!

The variant cover. This is the cover to issue #3. I did this cover with both a blue and a reddish background. I liked the blue better, but we went with red for print. The blue (I think) is being offered as a print.

This was my favorite cover, although the cover to #5 is a VERY close second. This is the cover to Fallen Justice #6, and it shows just how far over the edge (no pun intended) our hero has gone. His powers are killing him, and before he goes he's determined to kill all of the villains in the world. The problem with that is that his teammates, and other heroes, think that might be pushing it and try to stop him. Doesn't work out so well for them....

A look back at happier times for the cover of Fallen Justice #5? Well sort of....

Enough of the pinups and covers you say? You want to see some butt-kicking sequential action, you say? Well here you go....

Okay, okay....that's enough of that....

I'll come back and post some more a little later.

**RHughes** · 10-10-2010, 08:38 PM

I just ended a two week coloring vacation by doing a test page for Hi-Fi (which I'm sure I can't show) and had to change up the way I was working to fit in with the way the studio works. I really liked the results, so I applied it to these character sheets for another client of mine. It's a cut and brush approach, which isn't something I had done before. I'm pleased with the results, but I turn it over to you guys to give me a fresh set of eyes.

Lines by Harold Edge