nick cardy: behind the art

Behind the Art

All C

hara

cters

TM

& ©

DC

Com

ics.

by Nick Cardy and

Eric Nolen-Weathington

Behind the Art

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Behind the Art

TwoMorrows Publishing • Raleigh, North Carolina

14

“Hedy Lamarr”

(above) Many years ago, a shy, attractive, young lady named Donna asked me todo a drawing of Hedy Lamarr and gave me photo references of the movie star. Mymemory is vague, but she spoke of her husband’s business. I interrupted, “Youmean he exposes himself?” “No, no,” she corrected, “he exposes the artists.”

Again I questioned her, “But what do you mean he lays them out?” “No, no,”she explained, “he lays out their art for books.” “Oh, I see. He makes them famous.”

The way she raved about him, he must have been about seven feet tall.Finally, I asked if he could expose me. I don’t remember the husband’s name... heworked on a derrick or something. Well, I’ll think of it tomorrow. By the way, thatreminds me — uh oh, my two nurses found me.

(right) An advertisement for one of the operas produced that season by theSarasota Opera Company.

“Hedy Lamarr,” 2005, pencil, ©2008 Nick Cardy

“Hubert Perry, Basso,” 1988, pencil,©1988 Sarasota Opera Company

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Love and War

(above) This watercolor wasdone for my portfolio. I tried tomake a twentieth century rendi-tion of the shotgun wedding.

(right) My public library askedme if I could do something for aValentine’s Day promo. Thelovers were on an old DCromance comic book cover. On aprint I added the heart, similar toa sunset.

“Lovers,” 1988, ink, ©2008 Nick Cardy

“The Wedding ... ??!!,” 1988, ink, ©2008 Nick Cardy

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“As a boy, he turned his violent, foot-stamping temper tantrums

into a profession.”

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“San Francisco”

A black-and-white illustration for a travel agency of a trolley turnaround in San Francisco. This was drawn with penand ink, then I went over it with a sepia wash. The scene was taken from photo reference the agency sent me.

“San Francisco,” 1960, pen and ink with sepia wash, © respective owner

28

Cosmopolitan

This was one of my first magazine illustration assignmentsafter leaving DC. It’s a montage of several actors, all of whomwere featured in this issue of Cosmopolitan.

After I pencil something like this, I usually spray the pencilswith a fixative so that the black of the pencil marks don’t getmixed into the paint, making it muddy. But when I sprayed thisone, I used the wrong can — not the fixative. When I put thewatercolor over it, it made a lot of these speckles and dots. Ratherthan take the time to repencil it, I went ahead with the painting,and ended up with a speckled look all over. It didn’t look too badthat way, but then the art director said to me, “You have the wateraround June Allyson going right up to the border. Could youvignette that so that it corresponds to the vignette on the rightside?” To simulate the dots, I took a toothbrush and put it in a lit-tle white paint, then I tickled the brush to get a little spray.

©2008 Nick Cardy

©2008 Nick Cardy

watercolor, © Hearst Communications, Inc.

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Sheena

(right) Sheena was one of a series of “Cardy heroines” that I wasgoing to illustrate, along with Black Canary and Wonder Girl, etc.Sheena actually had a pet leopard, but my friend who commis-sioned the work wanted a lion instead.

(below) Pencil rough of a Tarzan illustration I drew to sell at aconvention.

Sheena © respective owner.

Prior to my drawing Aquaman, it was done as six-page stories by others. Then I was asked to do a Showcaseissue featuring Aquaman. After that I wet my feet with Aquaman #1 as its own book. I started that in 1962and drew the series until issue #39 in 1968. After that, I inked the covers for issues #40 through #56, whichwere penciled by other artists. Initially Carmine Infantino gave me cover layouts, but later on we wouldbounce ideas back and forth. We respected each other’s talents, and I received great freedom with my covers.

(upper left) When you get to the middle of the “Aquaman” title, you get to Mera’s head. The head leads to thehair, which swirls around with Aquaman and Aqualad. It has a very feminine feel to it, which emphasizesMera and the horror in her face.

(upper right) I asked to put the title logo at the bottom, so I could incorporate it into the ledge of the volcano.In order for the title to be seen on the newsstand, they put “Aquaman” in smaller print in the upper lefthandcorner. I like this cover for its simplicity.

(right) This is one of my absolute favorite covers. I really like the design of this. From the tip of Mera’s feet onthe left, to the end of Aquaman’s foot on the right, to the top of Aquaman’s head, makes a triangular design. Inback of him, that triangular design is repeated in the stalagmites. There are also smaller triangles with the watersplashing off Aquaman and the walrus. And as Mera’s arm comes down, she’s more or less pointing to Aqualad.

I think Jerry Serpe did the colors on this cover; he did a very nice job with it.

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Aquaman© DC Comics © DC Comics

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(upper left) Because someone else was going to color thispiece, I put in outlines of the waves. Nowadays, the coloristscan put in the shadings and eliminate the black lines. Ienjoyed doing the backlighting on the figures, and I like theheavy vines or tentacles coming up, because they add to thetunnel effect of the whirlpool and also provide contrast.

(upper right) A pencil sketch I did for a convention.

(left) When I was doing this piece I couldn’t find my projec-tor, and I didn’t have time to go and get the sketch blown up.So I drew a grid over the sketch and a larger, proportionateone on the board I was using for the final drawing, and usedthat to keep my proportions. It’s an old trick, but it’s a painin the butt to do.

(right) I like the effect of the perspective here. I made thesoles of the characters’ feet darker, and the pen-and-inklines get lighter as they go up. The sense of perspectivecomes as much from the thickness or thinness of the lines asfrom the characters’ proportions.

The clouds I stippled with the tip of a brush. The littleswirl on the left added an ethereal, otherworldly feel.

© DC Comics

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Aquaman ™ and ©DC Comics

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Aquaman ™ and © DC Comics

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(upper left) I like this one. It has a simple triangular design with Wonder Girl atthe top transformed into a witch.

(upper right) I really like the big skull. It makes an impact. It looks like they’re goingover a waterfall into this giant skull’s mouth. It’s too bad they cropped it so much withthe title and the characters down the side. I would have liked the image to be bigger.

My work at this time was a lot tighter as compared to my work on Bat Lash;there’s a lot of hay in this one. Bat Lash was done heavier, quicker, and a lot looser.

(left) I was going to use this sketch of Wonder Girl as part of the same series ofheroines the Sheena sketch was for. I may end up doing this as a painting someday.

(right) This is another one of my very favorite covers. The book stands as a monu-ment. The characters form a circle around it, with the heroes looking for Wonder Girlrunning to the right, up through Wonder Girl getting pulled into the book, back tothe left with all the characters coming out of the book, and back down to Aqualad.

I usually sign my name “Nick Cardy,” but my middle name is Peter. Peter isalso my son’s name, so I figured I’d put that in to give him a little kick.

© DC Comics

illustration ©2008Nick Cardy,Wonder Girl ™and © DC Comics

© DC Comics

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The New Wonder Girl

(above) A convention sketch of Wonder Girl.

(below) This is another of my favorites. WonderGirl’s breast, where it extends into the whitearea, is the center point of the action. The linesin the pink area, the arms of all the characters,and Wonder Girl’s left leg all come out of thatpoint in straight lines. It’s like an explosion. Imixed up the legs of the guys to keep it frombeing too geometrical. I think it’s effective.

(right) With this I wanted to keep the otherTeen Titans in the background make themsecondary to Wonder Girl. I tried hard tomake the pig-tailed Wonder Girl pretty, andwith her hair down the new Wonder Girl looksa little older.

With the costume I designed, her beltdoubled as a lasso, and the amulet she worearound her neck had a lot of gizmos in it, butthat stuff didn’t get used very much.

© DC Comics

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Wonder Girl ™ and © DC Comics

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(above) This illustration didn’t come out of the book. I penciled this with theintention of making a painting. I like the vignette effect, with the gun in limbo.

(left) In the old school, they used to say if you want something ethereal andholy, keep to vertical lines, like the columns of a temple or trees — somethingvery strong in feeling. If you want someone sleeping, you work on a horizonline. If you want to show action, you put it at an angle, and that’s what I didwith this cover.

© DC Comics

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Bat Lash ™ and © DC Comics

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(upper left) This is one of my favorite drawings. I was going to make this a painting,along with the illustration on the previous page. The only thing I don’t like aboutthis one is that I made him looking too angry. I don’t want him to look villainous.

(upper right) Another Bat Lash cover.

© DC Comics

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy,Bat Lash ™ and © DC Comics

56

Brave and the Bold

(above) This Batman was done for a friend who like cobblestones and bricks, so I put Batman in the same alley that Lady Luckwent through in 2002 on page 31.

(right) This story was set in London, with a Jack the Ripper sort of atmosphere, so I used a lot more pen and heavier blacks.When you have a mystery, good blacks help. The main thing with this cover was to try to create a fog throughout the illustra-tion. And as you open the page, the fog leads from one page to the other. I did a lot of crosshatching to make the fog work. Ithink it turned out pretty well. The only thing that louses it up is the sign. It would have been better had they made the wordslook like they were scribbled on the wall by hand.

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Batman ™ and © DC Comics

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Detective Comics

(above) A pencil Batman convention sketch.

(left) I called this one, “When the bats play in Las Vegas.” Toobad it was crowded by the side panel. I liked the Man-Bat figure,and wish I could have used the full page.

(right) I enjoyed playing with the menace behind Batman. Thisbackground was done in black-and-white, but I asked them to doit in a deep color and they had it separated to come out as purple.

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy,Batman ™ and © DC Comics

© DC Comics

64

Wonder Woman

(upper left) Rough pencil sketch for the Nick Cardy heroineseries of paintings.

(upper right and next page) Poor Wonder Woman! Themesses she gets into. This cover should have been a big hit.

(right) Wonder Woman versus sister, Nubia, with Mars ref-ereeing. A simple symmetrical design.

illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Wonder Woman ™ and © DC Comics

© DC Comics

© DC Comics

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illustration ©2008 Nick Cardy, Wonder Woman ™ and ©2008 DC Comics

The Flash

(above) This illustration was done for the Michigan Clinic to hang in their rec room. The supervisor hinted to my son, Peter,that the young patients would enjoy it, and Peter asked me if I could do it.

(right) In this design, Flash is framed very tightly by the falling buildings and the cracking road. There is literally danger allaround him. I think I got the effect I wanted here. I only drew Flash covers, never interiors, but I always tried to look at carsand things moving at high speed. At first I wanted to draw him as separate figures, but that’s a lot of work, and there are differ-ent ways to handle it. I also wondered what type of material his shoes were made of, because he really puts on the brakes here.

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Romance

Of all the romance covers I drew, I particularly like the cover I did for Girls’ Love #139.The design is very simple. In the background are couples hugging each other, while thegirl is all by herself isolated from the others, which makes her look even more lonely.They did a nice coloring job on this one.

There’s a scene in the movie, The General, where Buster Keaton’s character tries toenlist in the Confederate Army, but is refused because he is the chief engineer of thetrain. Everyone starts leaving town, and the soldiers are riding around him on horse-back, and soon he’s left all alone in the middle of the street. You can feel the loneliness.

In High Noon, you have Gary Cooper’s character getting ready for a showdown, andno one in town is going to help him. He’s walks out into the middle of the street allalone — that’s what you call loneliness.

I tried to capture that emotion here. I like the single figure in a sort of a no man’s land.

© DC Comics

© DC Comics

© DC Comics

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The Greatest1960s Stories Ever Told

(left) I started off with a rough design. It just dawned on me, but hereagain is an explosion design. Maybe I’m getting too repetitive.

(upper left) After I had the design for the cover, I put a sheet of trac-ing paper over the illustration, which was about 10" x 16" or so, anddrew individual pencil sketches of the characters.

(upper right and next page) Again using tracing paper, I did tightpencils of the characters. The red lines you see indicate how I want toplace the figures on the big master page.

illustrations ©2008 Nick Cardy, all characters ™ and © DC Comics

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illustrations ©2008 Nick Cardy, all characters ™ and © DC Com

ics

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(above and left) More tight pencils of the characters.

(right) Using the composite master page, I traced the image onto a gessoboard. Then I put down a tan background color, drew in the character out-lines, and filled in the color. I made the background a monotone color ofburnt sienna with some green and some little spots of blue.

I think I used acrylic, but I may have used a heavy Designers gouache.The stippling was done by rolling up a piece of cloth into a ball, dipping itin the paint, and dabbing it over the painting. Sometimes, rather thancoming directly down on it, I came down and quickly rubbed off the sideto get the distance from where the rub was coming.

The cover was done for a book called The Greatest 1960s Stories EverTold, which was to be the second in a series of books from DC, but thebook was cancelled. Apparently the first book didn’t do too well.


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I like the Mera pencils on the leftbetter than the way she came outin the painting. The pencils havea little more spark in them.


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(above) Tightened pencils of the heroes done on sep-arate pieces of tracing paper for positioning in thecomposition.

(left) A rough color layout. I decided I wanted theundertone to be a light yellow ochre.

(right) The final full illustration, done in watercolorand burnt sienna colored pencil. If you look veryclosely, you’ll be able to see little crosshatchingsdone with the colored pencil. I’m always trying some-thing different.


102

Those Lips, Those Eyes

(upper left) A watercolor painting for the cover of a Pocketbook novel.

(upper right) A pencil layout on tracing paper, ready for the painting.

(right) Final painting for Those Lips, Those Eyes, starring Frank Langella. For this illustration, I usedone male model and one female model for all the bodies, on which I then put various models’ heads. Ihad the two models pose, with a photographer taking pictures for me. Once I was in the studio, I put allthe figures on tracing paper.

When they make movies, they have a guy that goes around with a still camera taking pictures of theactors and sets. Then the studio will send you a sheet that’s full of these shots. If you want a certain shotto use as reference, they’ll enlarge it and send it to you. That’s how I got the reference to put the head ofFrank Langella onto my model’s body. The guy climbing up the ladder was Tom Hulce, who a few yearslater would play Mozart in Amadeus. The face of the girl on the bottom right was the actual face of mybody model.

I’m not sure why I changed Langella’s face to be looking at the camera rather than the girl. I musthave thought it looked better, but with that girl in his arms, he should have been looking at the girl!

illustrations © respective owners

115

“Going Home”

(upper left) The young girl I used as the model forthis painting was the daughter of my lady friend’sniece. We were visiting them in upstate New York,and I found a place nearby that had a painted pony.We went there and I took pictures of her on thishorse. While I was taking pictures, I backed up andgot the shock of my life — I had bumped up againstan electric fence!

(upper right) I’ve always loved horses — their anato-my and their balance and the way they stand. I didstudies of the pony, and once I got it right I put thelittle girl on it.

(left) I decided to make the girl in the painting lookas though she had been captured by Indians and thenfreed by the scout. She has a little cochina doll, and Iput moccasins and the Native American dress on her.

©2008 Nick Cardy

©2008 Nick Cardy

©2008 Nick Cardy

©2008 Nick Cardy

“Going Home,” pastel color rough, 9" x 13", ©2008 N. Cardy

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(upper left) I made several pastel color roughs, before settling on what I wanted. This is just one of many.

(lower left) A pencil rough of the scout.

(upper right) With the painting, I wanted to try to get across the feeling that they’re out across a great distance.Through the hills and valleys, I tried to keep the light and the main focus on the girl. The light comes down instreams from that middle cloud in order to justify the light that is on her head, which gives her a holy quality.

It came out fairly well, but I struggled with this painting.

©2008 Nick Cardy

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“Going Home,” 1982, oil painting, 24" x 36", ©2008 Nick Cardy

Nick Cardy:Behind The Art

Nick Cardy has been doing fantasticartwork for more than sixty years,from comics, to newspaper strips, toillustration. His work on DC Comics’Teen Titans, and his amazing comicscovers, are universally hailed as someof the best in the medium’s history,but his Commercial Illustration work isjust as highly regarded by those in theknow. Now, this lavish full-color hardcover lets you see what goes onbehind his amazing art! Nick has selected dozens of his favorite piecesfrom throughout his career and showshow they came to be in this remarkable art book. From the reams of preliminary workas well as Nick's detailed commentary, you will gain fascinating insight into how thisgreat artist works, watching each step of the way as some of his most memorable images come to life!

(128-page full-color hardcover) $34.95 • (Digital Edition) $7.95http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=655

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THELINK BELOW TO ORDER THIS BOOK!

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=655

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nick cardy: behind the art

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