I was honored to be asked again to contribute to the wonderful Art for Hope project put together by Viz Media and AutoDesk.

Art for Hope is a digital art anthology benefiting the victims of the devastating earthquakes that ravaged Nepal on April 25th 2015. It is an e-book that features original works by 54 renowned pop, comic and graphic novel artists that were created using the Autodesk SketchBook digital painting and drawing App.

Concept

The assignment was to create an image about hope.

I found myself drawn to the idea of writing as hope. The theory that if you had the ability to create, imagine or write then you had hope. Originally I tried to work with imagery featuring a typewriter but decided it would be more dynamic if someone was in peril and using writing as a means of saving themselves.

To me, hope is the belief that things will get better even under the worst circumstances.

Process

I thought I would walk you through some of my process for creating the piece I did for the book.

My initial layout containing just the preliminary shapes .

Here are the pencils before I inked them. You may notice some octopus tentacles that I later removed in place of some fish as it seemed to busy (and a little silly).

Finished inks. As I did these in Sketchbook Pro it afforded me the opportunity to use a colored line (as opposed to black) for anything in the background or below the waters surface.

After inking I blocked all the color before adding any shading and fine tuning.

The finished piece as it appears in the anthology.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy ART FOR HOPE: NEPAL is available now for $4.99 from VIZ.com, VIZManga.com and all of VIZ Media’s digital partner platforms including ComiXology, NOOK, Kindle Fire, as well as in the iBooks and Google Play Stores.

Proceeds benefit the victims of the earthquakes that struck Nepal on April 25, 2015.

Below is the work I created for the Art for Hope 2011 edition.