Smoke and the Shadows in the Cemetery of Lost Souls (John Constantine)

As the sun began its slow descent towards the horizon, casting a warm, blue-tinged glow over the crumbling headstones within the Abney Park Cemetery, John Constantine stood tall, his eyes fixed on the statued gravestone before him. The angel, its features chiseled from marble, held a bow and arrow in its outstretched hand, its gaze seeming to pierce the very soul of the man standing before it.

The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, and the distant chirping of crickets provided a mournful accompaniment to the silence. A light foggy mist had begun to rise from the ground, shrouding the gravestones in a veil of mystery. The mist was so fine that it seemed to glow with soft, ethereal light as if the very essence of the dead was rising to greet the living.

As Constantine puffed on his cigarette, the flame casting a brief, golden glow on his weathered face, he noticed that the mist was illuminated by shafts of light that seemed to pierce through the fog like rays from the heavens. The light was so intense that it cast eerie shadows on the ground, making it seem as if the dead themselves were rising to claim the living.

"What's the story, angel?" Constantine muttered to himself, his voice low and gravelly.  As he spoke, the wind picked up, rustling the leaves of the nearby trees and sending a faint whispering through the air. Constantine's eyes never left the angel's face, his mind racing with the possibilities. He knew that in this place, where the veil between the worlds was thin, the whispers of the dead could be heard on the wind. And he had a feeling that this angel was trying to tell him something, something that would change the course of his life forever.

[Workflow: Used Tengr to generate a variation of a source Llovet image featuring John. Then used Google image searches to find all the other components to use as further elements. Composed these pieces of John, re-used cigarette+smoke+glow from one of my other images, refaced the grave marker behind John, added more trees, applied curves + HSL recoloring effects, fog pixel layers, ray lighting layer, bunches of masking work.  All final edits, and source image clean-ups were done within Affinity Photo.]

Image list:

1. final image of John smoking a cigarette in a graveyard
2. Gravestone Halloween image i used
3. Graveyard with trees
4. green rays that I overlaid with foggy/mist layer

Smoke and the Shadows in the Cemetery of Lost Souls 

.

.

.

.

.

Legend of the Serpent's Temptation (John Constantine)

[another imagined John Constantine comic book cover for DC Comics for a one-shot storyline proposed to be written by Ray Fawkes with interior art by Juan Ferreyra.]

John Constantine's fevered mind conjured up a vision of the Garden of Eden, lush and vibrant, with trees heavy with forbidden fruit. He saw himself standing amidst the verdant paradise, the air thick with the scent of blooming flowers and the distant hum of a thousand whispers. The sun beat down upon his skin, but he felt no heat, only a creeping sense of unease.

As he wandered deeper into the garden, the trees grew taller and the shadows darker. John's eyes scanned the surroundings, his hand instinctively reaching for the cigarette pack in his pocket, only to remember he'd left it on the nightstand back in his dingy London flat. A faint rustling caught his attention, and he turned to face a massive, serpentine creature coiled at the base of a gnarled tree. Its scales glinted like polished obsidian, and its eyes burned with an otherworldly green fire.

The snake's gaze locked onto John, and he felt an inexplicable pull as if the creature was drawing him closer to the tree. A branch creaked, and a single, glowing apple fell from its bough into John's hand. The snake's forked tongue darted in and out, tasting the air, and John's mind whispered a single, chilling phrase: "Eat the fruit, and all your sins will be forgiven."

[Workflow: Inspired by Yasmine Putri's cover art from Hellblazer #17 (2018).  A series of Tengr image prompts to get many elements in the same dark-colored painting format, found a bunch of snake & vegetation images on the internet. Composed these pieces of John, tree, apple, and vegetation, along with special Fx overlays, and texturing work.]

final variant cover art

raw image without DC Comics branding

inspiration artwork