Phil Winslade - Dredd for the Win!

The mighty Phil Winslade is back with his second Dredd cover in just over a month and it's a cracker! Those colour choices are fantastic, the cover gives a real expressionist or abstract art kinda feel, very classy indeed! 

The artist was kind enough to talk us through his process, over to Phil "I actually did the cover at the same time as my Meg one. Tharg liked two of the six ideas I had and commissioned both. Here's my initial sketch..."

Dredd stars in the new 'Sure for Men' deodorant advert.

"With the image commissioned I went on to do the rough copy-tonal sketch below."

"Hello? Hello? Drokk!" Dredd gets his phone and lawgiver mixed up again...

"Next, the cartoon which I painted on..."

Sheesh, Dredd's arm must be getting tired by now.

Here's a scan of the image as Phil was painting it, absolutely beautiful!

Who's gonna mess with him?

Next Phil talks about that arresting (no pun intended) background, he says "The background palate I worked out on Photoshop. I wanted the background to be more inference than actuality (using the Akira-style speedlines but inferring streetlights and buildings in an abstract, impressionistic way so that the momentum wasn't lost)."

Lines and lines and lines!

Like many of the artists who contribute to this blog, Phil is known to worry about the colour balance of his scanned image. He says "I've probably over-compensated when editing the scans - what you have as a painting is not what you get as a scan and the color balance shifts and hues are very hard to recover. Until you see it in print you can never be sure how the process will affect what you do." 

Well I for one don't think Phil has to worry too much, it looks pretty damn prefect to me! Below is the finished cover, fab!

"This... is my broomstick!"

Here's how the final image looks on your newsagent's shelf. Phil was happy that the finished version picked up the greens and oranges which ran through his cover...

Dredd stakes out the Tate Modern...

Huuuuge thanks to Phil for sending the images and fascinating process notes. We'll be seeing lots more of his excellent work later in the year when Lawless hits the Megazine. The story is written by Dan Abnett and features, much to his relief, black and white art work by Phil. Can't wait for that!