hellboy black and white cover

This Hellboy cover/pinup was done with a couple of different tools. I wanted to do a nice detailed illustration using a set of repidograph pens that I got on clearance. I was looking at a lot of Virgil Finlay at the time but I didn't want to go as far as he did with pointalism. I had my fill of the pens after the background and a little of Hellboy so I switched to my traditional dip pen and finished the rest. There are aspects of the movie version combined with mainly the comic version of the character. It turned out quite well after the many, many hours on line work. Honestly, the pic here doesn't do justice to the amount of lines in the work especially the background. I used the smallest pen for the background because I wanted it to recede back. Every other line used on Hellboy is larger than the background to bring him forward. The use of heavy blacks helps to solidify Hellboy to the foreground as well.