night sketch

Yesterday I did this doodle on the table paper at a bar. I think he'll be in a page next week.

Opinions of a doodle

Are you doing anything new?

Faces

layout

My page layouts are the size of a postcard, and Bá and I solve all the storytelling and design "problems" of a page right there and then.

We used to do them smaller, the size you expect a "thumbnail" to be (hence the name), but doing them slightly bigger allows us to really see the story flow and imagine the layouts as smaller versions of the page instead of doodles.

Watercolor drawing.

Sometimes I forget what we can draw while listening to somebody talk. Given the right tools, it's amazing how freeing these "loose" drawings are. Every artist should try it at times, in bars, in school, at conventions.

The "capture the moment" kinda drawing sometimes says more about you than about the person you're portraying.

The girl you'll meet.

Back on the horror track!

The response for PIXU has been great and that helps us continue on the horror path we created. We were eager to be drawing again, and I think every time this happens with an artist, it shows on the first pages that come from this creative hunger. The best thing about having a working routine and a daily output of work is the constant feed we get from finishing a page, a feed that only enlarges our hunger and leaves us always wanting more.

There's nothing better.

Siamese

I had more fun drawing this preliminary sketches than drawing the cat on the actual story, which was just a one page story. Now I want to think of other stories, even if just as short, and make the cat appear again just so I can draw him some more.

The theatre.

Sometimes, in order to avoid losing the movement of the free hand drawing, I use reference photos on the sketches. This way, you can copy the boring angle of the picture in the sketch just to learn how that building works and to learn its details, but when you're doing the actual page, you're free from the reference photo and you can just draw like you like.

Front

TOMBO

Warm up for the day. Pencil with TOMBO brush pens. When we discovered TOMBO pens, we were fascinated by the brush pen, and all the different colors. We bought a bunch of pens years ago. Then we realized they are not waterproof, and if you draw with your hand touching the paper, you're going to make a big mess of your drawing.

We don't use these pens for any professional job anymore (maybe for some quick storyboards), but we still have a bunch and doing early warm up sketches is all I can think of so we don't waste them and throw them away.

Life drawings

Fragile

Talking about style back in the day.

I've done these series of drawings to use on a class about inking and style. They were all done based on a photograph, so none of them show what my style really is, but they show 4 different ways to draw the same scene.



Your style is the way you chose to show things or to say things. It's all you've chosen to put in and all you left out.



If you're looking at a photograph, you see all that's there to see, all that was captured by the lenses and when you want to draw that, you have to chose what is important for the drawing and what is useless information. All those things you find important, all the details that make it into the picture, they are defined by your style.



When you're not looking at a picture to draw something, you'll have to make all the decisions of what goes in and what stays out in your mind. For something like that to really work, you must know very well the subject you're gonna draw. And that's when live drawing comes very handy. The more live drawing sketches you make, the more studies you do, more "visual vocabulary" you get to enable you to draw anything you want in your own style.



There's no right or wrong, better or worse. I can't say a clean sharp style like Mignola's is better than a very scratchy dirty "detailed" art like McFarlane's, a cartoony style like Jeff Smith's or the very photo-realistic cinematic style of Bryan Hitch. You all know I'm teasing you and all I could say would be a matter of personal taste, but what really matters in the end is that all the choices you make work in favor of the story. Your art should help you tell the story and not distract the eyes of the reader.

There are endless bits of information in every single panel you make and it's up to you to chose what will help you tell your story and what's useless lines in a piece of paper.