We have a wide range of original pages we brought to San Diego this year, and they’ll be available at the Beguiling booth (1629).
Hellboy cover and pages, American Vampire pages, Umbrella Academy pages, Chrononauts and Killjoys covers, and more. The image shows some of the pages we left with them.
Bá and I work on many projects at the same time. Part as a result of being a freelancer and thinking we have to accept every offer we get ( dreading not having any after we finish the current book), and part just because there are projects, invitations and people who want to collaborate with us that we can't simply say no – they're too good to pass –, we end up working on many things, some big, some small, some writing for ourselves to draw, and some drawing what others have written.
So, from time to time, when we finish something and have a little time to step back and look at what we're doing... well, to look at our drawing board, then we get so see some of these many facets of the delicate crystal we work on.
Tonight, I finished the first draft of a new script and sent it over to the editor. That's the high point of my week – the awful game on tuesday being the low – so I stepped back and tried to look at my drawing board.
My sketchbook has a figure drawing of a woman from last year's class I gave (I have something I can't show yet on another page, so I flipped it to that page to take this picture).
On the top left, I have some bookplates left for the BPRD: Vampire TPB that we did for Gosh.
I started to sort out original art to take with me to San Diego for Comic Con, and that's why the Killjoys variant cover I did is there, looking right at us.
The bottom left is what's left of color studies and preparation for coloring my story for the Magenta issue of the CMYK Vertigo Quarterly anthology.
On the right, the script and the layouts of Casanova 4.2, which I'm working on and am afraid I'm a little late.
Boom!
Pa-Zow!
Back to work. It doesn't really matter if you work on one project, or on many. If you believe in what you're doing, it's all worth it, and you should give it everything you have.
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.
It's sexy. It's crazy. What else can I say for sure about CASANOVA?
It was a very hard year working on this series and juggling it with all the other projects both Matt and I had to do, so I'm really sorry to have delayed issues #3 and #4 so much. But, in the end, it was for the best, because I was more focused and could produce what I think were some of the best pages of my life.
AVARITIA was a crazy story arc that explained a lot of things and left a whole other bunch on the air, but that's the way it is with this book. And what comes next? We'll have to wait and see. Only Matt knows.
So if you're a fan of Casanova Quinn, Sasa Lisi, Suki Boutique and Luther Desmond Diamond, you'll be thrilled to know that we're bringing original pages of AVARITIA to sell next week on SDCC at our booth (#1320). Here's the amazing selection of pages (click on the pages to see a bigger version).
Oh, how I loved that Ziggy Startdust reference. It came out perfect. I really love when Matt points at something and I nail it. It's a very hard thing to do. the man is not from this world.
The folks of Beguiling have some other pages as well, from previous stories. So don't forget to check them out. They sell it online and I'm sure they'll bring of of them to the show as well.
AAAAAANNNNND… we will have all three trades of the Casanova series for sale at our booth.
LUXURIA, GULA and AVARITIA. Very exciting!
PA-ZOW!
Both Fábio and I have been big fans of Mike Mignola's work for a long time and when he began Hellboy, it just blew our brains with his amazing style and perfect mix of fun story, great characters, amazing design and overwhelming use of black&white art.
It was a great honor to have worked with him on BPRD:1947.
So if you're a fan of the Hellboy universe as well, you'll be happy to know we're bringing original pages for SDCC next week! We have a bunch already with the folks at Beguiling and I'm sure they're bringing them all this to the show, but here's the new selection of pages (click on the pages to see a bigger version).
It's great to create characters that survive your story and move forward on their own. Ota, the priest we helped creating for this series, has new adventures of his own on the series Cameron Stewart is doing, called BPRD - Hell on Earth: Exorcism. Go check it out.
So if you're going to SDCC, stop by our booth (#1320) and check out all the original pages we have there, as well of all the amazing comics too, of course.
San Diego Comic Con International is just around the corner, happening from July 11th to July 15th and, once again, Fábio and I will be there and share a booth with some amazing artist friends: Jill Thompson, Becky Cloonan, Andy Belanger and Rafael Albuquerque, plus the talented Murilo Martins.
We will have our books to sell this year. Umbrella Academy (both volumes), CASANOVA (Luxuria, Gula and the freshly compiled AVARITIA trade), our beloved Daytripper and more. Please stop by to check out any – or all – of the books.
And, as we have done in previous years, we'll have original artwork for sale ate our booth (and some with the nice folks of The Beguiling store over at the Drawn and Quarterly booth, very close to ours). And other pages I'll have are on this link.
Here's a preview of some of the Umbrella Academy pages I'll bring, from the amazing Apocalypse Suite series (click on the image to see a bigger version).
(this last page, page 07 from issue 4, is reserved already).
We'll put more updates before we travel, with signing information, panels, shows, Trickster and everything you need to know to find us on the big, crazy show. It's so close. Again.
See you all soon.
