Adam Hughes
Adam Hughes (born May 5, 1967) is an American comics artist and illustrator best known to American comic book readers for his renderings of pinup-style female characters, and his cover work on titles such as Wonder Woman and Catwoman. He is known as one of comics' foremost cheesecake artists,[1][2][3] and one of the best known and most distinctive comic book cover artists.[2][4] Throughout his career Hughes has provided illustration work for companies such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros. Pictures, Playboy magazine, Joss Whedon's Mutant Enemy Productions, and Sideshow Collectibles.[5] He is also a fixture at comics conventions where his commissioned sketches command long lines.[6]
For other people named Adam Hughes, see Adam Hughes (disambiguation).Adam Hughes
May 5, 1967
Riverside Township, New Jersey, U.S.
American
2018 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue/One-Shot
Career[edit]
Early work[edit]
Hughes, who had no formal training in art,[10] began his career in 1987.[5][13] His first comic book work was a pinup in Eagle #6. He penciled two short stories and the first issue of Death Hawk, created by Mark Ellis. In 1988 Hughes became the penciller on writer Mike W. Barr's detective series Maze Agency, as his portfolio bore samples of both that series and Mike Gustovich's Justice Machine. Maze Agency, published by Comico, and edited by Michael Eury, became Hughes' first regular series and his first color work. Despite wanting to draw action-oriented superhero stories at the time, he credits his work on Maze Agency, whose scripts Barr composed in the full script format, with improving his skill and confidence at storytelling. In a 2004 interview, he stated that this work also developed his preference for character-oriented stories over action-oriented ones, both as an artist and a writer. Hughes' interior pencils were inked by Eury's longtime friend Rick Magyar, and because Hughes aspired to ink his own work one day, he took Barr's suggestion that he produce pinups on each issue's back cover as an advertisement for the next issue to practice inking his own pencils. It was around this time that Hughes switched to inking with a brush on the advice of Dave Stevens when Stevens looked at Hughes' samples.[14] Hughes stayed on the series for a year,[15] though he took a month off during this run to provide the pencils on Comico's issue 12 of Bill Willingham's series Elementals #12.[14]
After two years of providing background art or interior pencils on independent books, writer/artist Willingham introduced Hughes to Andy Helfer, the editor on the DC Comics series Justice League America. Helfer was impressed by Hughes' portfolio and asked Hughes to contact him when his contract expired. A few months later, after Comico went out of business, Helfer contacted Hughes, hiring him initially to draw inventory covers for issues like Mister Miracle #19, one of Hughes' favorite creations by Jack Kirby. Hughes was then made the regular artist on Justice League America, with issue #31 being his first published DC Comics work.[8][16] At the time he began on that book, he was still working at a comics shop two days a week.[17] He continued doing covers and interior art on the title for two years, before switching to providing covers only.[18]
In February 1992,[19] at the age of 24, Hughes moved to Atlanta, Georgia to join Gaijin Studios, believing that working more closely alongside fellow artists would improve his own skills. Hughes stayed with Gaijin Studios for 12 years.[12] That same year, he penciled Comics' Greatest World: Arcadia #3 for Dark Horse Comics, which featured the first appearance of the supernatural character Ghost. He drew that character subsequently in the 1994 one-shot Ghost Special. When that character was given her own series in 1995, Hughes penciled the first three-issue storyline, "Arcadia Nocturne".[15]
From 1994 to 1995, Hughes drew the satirical storyline "Young Captain Adventure", which appeared in the first several issues of the adult comics anthology magazine Penthouse Comix. Hughes also provided a painted cover for issue #2, and a pinup in issue #26 in 1997.[15] In a 2011 interview, he indicated that while he did not regret that work, he felt shame at the time he produced it, as he feared it might end his future prospects with companies like Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and because he feels that depicting full nudity is less fulfilling than merely suggestive art. Hughes explains:[20]
Materials[edit]
The penciling process Hughes employs for his cover work is the same he uses when doing sketches for fans at conventions, with the main difference being that he does cover work in his sketchbook, before transferring the drawing to virgin art board with a lightbox.[63][64] When penciling his convention drawings, Hughes prefers 11 x 14 Strathmore bristol vellum paper, because he prefers that paper's rougher surface, although he uses smoother paper for brush inking,[65] and he illustrated some Catwoman covers on animation paper.[66] He does preliminary undersketches with a lead holder,[67] because he feels regular pencils get worn down to the nub too quickly. As he explained during a sketch demonstration at a comic book convention, during this process he uses a Sanford Turquoise 4B lead, a soft lead, though when working at home in Atlanta, where the humid weather tends to dampen the paper, he sometimes uses a B lead or 2B lead, which acts like a 4B in that environment.[65] However, his website explains that he uses 6B lead, with some variation. For pieces rendered entirely in pencil, he employs a variety of pencil leads of varying degrees of hardness.[59] After darkening in the construction lines that he wishes to keep, he erases the lighter ones with a kneaded eraser before rendering greater detail.[67] For more detailed erasures, he uses a pencil-shaped white eraser, and to erase large areas, he uses a larger, hand-held white eraser, which he calls a "thermonuclear eraser", because it "takes care of everything".[65]
For inking, which is Hughes' least favorite part of the illustration process,[68] he uses a size three Scharff brush and Dr. Ph. Martin's Black Star Hi-Carb ink.[59] Hughes also favors Faber-Castell PITT artist pens, which come in a variety of points, including fine, medium, bold and brush tips, which Hughes uses for brush work on convention sketches. Though he stated in a 2006 interview that he favored PITT pens for convention sketches, but never for cover work,[65] he later used them to illustrate the cover of ImagineFX magazine #67 in 2011,[64] and for an illustration of Fire and Ice for a Justice League card game.[69] He occasionally will use Copic markers in both warm and cool gray tones to render covers in grayscale.[59] Similar to his penciling, Hughes tends to ink different portions of the sketch at random,[70] though when rendering an attractive female, he begins with the face, so that in the event that he fails to capture her good looks, an entire rendered illustration has not been wasted.[64] He uses Sharpie markers to fill in larger areas,[65] which he feels would be too tedious to render in pencil, such as the costumes of characters like Batman, which he believes should be rendered in black rather than blue.[63] He uses Photoshop to color his cover work.[10][59] He initially colored his covers after inking them traditionally, but beginning with Wonder Woman (Vol 2) #195, he switched methods to one in which he renders the greyscale stage in pencil, pen and marker like a painting, and then uses Photoshop's Layer tool to colorize each element in the image separately.[71]
Hughes sometimes uses colored markers to embellish parts of a convention sketch, as when he uses red for female characters' lips, or a silver pen to render scenes set in outer space.[65][72] When rendering an entire sketch in grey tones or full color, Hughes, who once used Prismacolor or Design 2 markers, explained at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International that for the past four years, he had been using Copic markers, a set of which a fan gave him as a gift, because Copic markers are refillable, and because he found that they produce longer-lasting colors, and can be used several times longer than other brands,[73][74] as he was still using the same package of nibs as of August 2010 that came with the first set of Copics he was given four years previously.[75] When using Copics, he takes care to erase his pencils, and to not work dark-to-light, because of the mottled effects that result from doing so.[76] He has conducted demonstrations of Copic markers at conventions on a number of occasions.[77]