Bonds Trade Cover

The folks over at Image Comics have decided to collect the three issues of Bonds into a trade paperback. The good news for me is that I got to create a new cover for the event. The bad news for me is that I had to do this the weekend before finals week. Well, art is about energy and focus. So I looked at this as an opportunity to see what I could do in 48 hours...
So, it always starts off with a sketch. A dozen to be more precise. As potentially the last illustration I would create for Bonds, I had to think about what I wanted to say. If you can say it in words, you have a shot to illustrate it. For me, Faith's path of vengeance meant that she collected souls. The tattoos represent every soul she killed, but for the cover I wanted to somehow show the people who were also important to her story...we are, after all, who we let into our lives.
Originally, I wanted to riff off of the Coles Phillips fade-away technique. But I decided that I wanted portraits of her family and foes to emerge from the shadows. I also wanted to have the Wolf Spirit's head turn into fire. These two elements, shadows and fire, seem to best represent Faith's life and death.

For the final trade which should be in the stores in early July 2010, I also plan to create a new prologue to the story. But this will have to wait until Scars 1 is completed... And I thought that I received an illustration degree, not an MFA in Juggling!