Costumes! Costumes! Costumes!
Drawing I did for the CBLDF auction that will happen next week during #sdcc2017. You will have a chance to see this original at the CBLDF welcome party at the Westgate Hotel on Thursday night, July 20th (among several other incredible pieces of art), and the auction will happen on Saturday (check out where at the CBLDF website).
I’ll be at the party. See you there!
Every year, we contribute a new piece of art to the auction that takes place at SDCC to help raise funds for the CBLDF. Many of the artwork and original pieces are exhibited at the party they throw every year at the Westgate Hotel, where you have at chance to chat with many creators.
The auction itself takes place on saturday, and here are the two new pieces we did.
This week, both Bá and I did new original drawings for the annual CBLDF auction that takes place in San Diego during Comic Con. We took some time from our crazy-busy schedules (made even crazier by the fact that World Cup is going on just outside our studio window) and created two new images with characters we have created. TFAW, who always helps coordinate this, will make prints of the images that the artists will be able to keep and sell, so I decided to make a full color image that would make a great 10 x 17 print.
My first idea was to do a Sugarshock image. Everybody seems to really love those characters, and you could say that right now Joss Whedon, writer of Sugarshock and nowadays writer and director of the Avengers movies, has never been as popular. I sketched the characters on my notebook and started working on the final image, but something wasn't clicking and I wasn't happy with where I was going with the drawing. I decided to call it a day and get back to it the next morning, and I'm glad I did.
Next morning, I went looking for inspiration at one of my sources: Pinterest. I used to keep thousands of images in folders on my computer, but nowadays it's much easier to keep everything I think might inspire an illustration or a story on my Pinterest page. If you go check it out, you'll find elements of my recent CMKY stories for Vertigo, as well as research for the short Hellboy story, and many other images from across the internet that I keep in handy to mix up in my head when I'm at the drawing board.
The new wave of inspirational images made me decide to change characters, and the drawing became a Casanova image. It's easier to imagine Casanova in any situation, anywhere, with anyone. Much more pleased with this second sketch, I showed it to Bá:
"It's great", he said, "but lose the cheetah and the boat". I agreed and started working on the final piece.
I took pictures of the process to post on twitter, and it's a great way to see the way I was thinking visually, how I left many decisions for the inking stage, how I helped to make the characters pop by using cool darker colors on the background, how the red elements united the characters, how dripping and large expressive brushstrokes help give it a "drawing" look, a "hand-made" look.
After it was done, dry and ready, I scanned it, adjusted the colors on photoshop and sent it over by email. The original will be going with me to San Diego, where I shall say farewell to this painting, hoping it will find a great new home on the collection of some lucky fan.
Usagi Yojimbo.
Ink and watercolor, 2014
The original is being auctioned to help Usagi's creator, Stan Sakai. 9 days to bid on it and take the piece home and help out on a great cause at the same time.
Details of the auction here.
This artwork will be published in the upcoming Dark Horse Comics special book, "THE SAKAI PROJECT; Celebrating 30 Years of Usagi Yojimbo", Being release in July, 2014 (at San Diego Comic-Con) with all proceeds also going to Stan & Sharon Sakai.
Every year, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund auction takes place during SDCC. We have been doing and donating original artwork for the auction for the last three years, and this year we did again.
1-Just like everybody, Bá misses the Umbrella Academy characters and he jumped at the opportunity to draw them again, Dallas style.
2- Warming up for the next arc, I did Sasa Lisi and Zephyr Quinn from our book Casanova. Pa-ZOW!
The nice people from TFAW even take the artwork we, and several other artists, contribute and make sketchcards for us to give out for free and help promote the auction. If you stop at their booth (#5625) you can get their latest batch of sketches (you can see preview images of the drawings from all the artists here, here and here), ours included. We'll have the sketchcards from our drawings at our booth as well (#1320), so stop by.
Both images will be auctioned off July 14th in room Sapphire AB at the Hilton Bayfront, starting at 8:00 p.m., with all proceeds benefiting the First Amendment rights of the comics community!
As explained here and here, once again we're participating in the CBLDF auction that takes place every year during SDCC in San Diego. We were thrilled to be able to use characters we grew up reading, and by the scenes we did, you can see when we got hooked up on super heroes.
Both our booth (1320) and the CBLDF booth will have signing cards of those images, but imagine how great would the original look on your wall.
See you in San Diego!
The CBLDF holds its biggest auction of the year at Comic-Con, and this year brings some amazing one-of-a-kind items to raise money for free speech!
We've donated a cover from Casanova, so if you like Casanova, and you want to support the CBLDF, here's your chance.
Click HERE for a complete list of the items being aucitoned, including an original Jeff Smith page, a Jim Lee batman, a Paul Pope Batman page, a heart breaking page from Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, and much more!
