Hasta pronto, farewell, goodbye...

Hi, folks. Much time has passed since the last post and I think it will remain so for a while. I'm in some serious projects and I lack the time to update regularly. I hope you'll have a very happy summertime. We'll see asap.
Greetings!

I've seen that face before...

After so much time and of so many entries, I really do not remember if I have posted this page before. Anyway, here it is. From the first chapter of The Hypothetical Lizard the stellar appearance of my elder brother as a haughty-seller-of-forbidden-things.
It was so funny to be able to draw well-known people in cameos.

Underwater!

A very old picture of an underwater Judge Dredd. I thought it would be interesting to see such a great city dweller in a rare medium. I have tried to adjust the gray levels 'cos the original was drawn on a transparent sheet and the were still a lot of traces of pencil. This illustration was designed to be printed on a black t-shirt, so I would use a negative image for this purpose...

Can you notice everything?

Another page from Mool. Once more.
A splash page full of little details and even little lines.
When I now see so much work (fishing nets, the links of the chain, the mollusks in the post, the rope...) made me wonder "really worth it?".
Fortunately, most times I answer "yes".

Fast and sloppy

More stuff from Mool. This page is titled "run and hide". The end of the saga was so near that everything became much faster and brutal... Even my way of drawing, as you can see in the absence of background in some panels.

Brush tribute

I've always been a great admirer of black and white artists. Artists like Frank Robbins, Alex Toth or the spaniard Jordi Bernet.
Indeed, this old illustration is about Bernet. My brother was working in the latest spanish edition of Andrax, and I was asked to draw the main characters.
I thought it would be a good idea to imitate Bernet in the brush stroke ... I even did it with his signature, as a small tribute.

Abstract drawing

I've always thought that Moore's prose in The Hypothetical Lizard was very difficult to move to a basic visual level, which is why I tried through the drawings and page composition substantiate the atmospheric feeling into something much more tangible.
This page is an example of what I say.

A lot of gray matter

From Hypothetical Lizard, a full size page.
I think that brain is so real that even you can see how the neurons connect to each other ...
I'm joking. of course.
But, don't you think it's a little disturbing?

Mool means Death!

Time without posting, folks. Today I will solve it with another page of Mool. I think that ye have seen in a very small size some time ago. Now I post it in a larger size that ye may be witnesses to the brutality of the Dark God.

Waking up with the devil inside

More from Mool.
A quiet, talking scene...
...before the nightmare begin.
(what else can you get with a boy and a cursed god in the same place?)

Good Advice

Hello, my friends. These are some of the readings that I want to enjoy this weekend.
As an artist, I always hope to learn from other artists.
As a comic fan, I really enjoy the great authors.
In this photo you can see works by Jordi Bernet, the classic Creepy, the fabulous Kick-Ass by Millar and Romita Jr., and The Veil, work of two friends: El Torres and Gaby Hernandez. And believe me, The Veil is so good I bought two copies.
If you are in, you ought to take a good look.
Worthwhile.

No substance

I remember when I designed Mool character I thought I'd draw it as a translucent being, without shadows or reflections. The original idea was that he was feeding off the shadows of his victims, and so, gradually, he would be turning dark and massive (in this page Mool has swollen the shadow from the Priest of the Dark Order, so you can see little black spots on him).
Today this would have been easy to do with computer effects, but at the time was more complicated.
Just try to draw something without substance...

With great power comes...

...great voice!
From Mool.
A priest of the dark order conjures the God spirit through the gem of blood. I used the graphic appeal of the runes around the priest to indicate that his words were not those of mere mortals. Aesthetics, again, derived from my vision of Dark City. Great movie, indeed!

In a Dark Hole

This is one of my favorite pages from whole Mool series.
In fact, it's the fourth page of the first chapter, and I was very excited to translate graphically many of the ideas I had in mind about this character.
I remember that at that time I saw the film Dark City, by Alex Proyas, and I was very surprised and admired by its aesthetics (and for the great soundtrack too!).
So probably part of the paraphernalia of this temple can come from my admiration for that film.

Save some time!

"Your time is precious! The day still has 24 hours but from now on you'll have more extra time due to the power of the totally new Super Black India Ink, that makes inking easier".
Great!

Lines and Shadows

Another page from Mool, where I take the opportunity to expand the silhouette of the protagonist, created by using lines and shadows, creating a contrast between the first shot of the character based on solid shades of black.

Every f*****g detail!

I'm trying to find the original pages of the comic Thousand Gods and a single heaven, as my friend, as my friend Cromsblood asked me to do. So far I've found an old folder with a bunch of old pictures and character tests. I think some of them do deserve to be shown. Like this one I'm posting now. This is an full detailed illustration of Thazer, a character I created with my brother as a writer 15 years ago! Who knows: maybe one day we return to that story for a major publisher...

Best shot

Another example from Mool. I emphasize the best shot of the entire page.
In this series I used a lot of brush, although not my favorite tool for drawing and I've never really felt comfortable with it. But I really like the contrast between the thicknes of lines that it provides.
I take this opportunity to inform you that last week José González died, one of the best spanish cartoonists and illustrators. Perhaps you know his Vampirella, but there are a lot of work that you should seek to understand the greatness of this artist.

Gripping narrative...

So long, my friends. I've been really busy with some deadlines and a lot of commissions, but now I'm back. Today I bring you one of my favorite pages from Mool, the god of shadows.
I posted time ago this page in a very poor resolution, so now I get it back directly from the magazine where it was published into a much greater size.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Team Triumph...

...Triumph time! This picture (quite old, it must be said) corresponds to my vision of the heroes of the team Triomphe. A genial spoof of superheroes created by my good friend Torres, Machuca and Pepe Diaz. We all were working at the time in the same editorial, and it was quite often to see little contributions from ones to anothers...

Pandora (before Avatar... or not)

A good friend, Paul Adams, from Vancouver, Washington, sends me a digital copy of Threshold - Mythic Sirens Pinup from Avatar Press. In this magazine, on page 23, is my contribution: a Pandora's pin up.
I posted that picture long ago in this blog, but now I am able to display to a really fucking good resolution . I hope that you enjoy it.
Thanks to Paul!

So near, so far

I've always liked to see the original sketches that lead to an original drawing. I have always tried to find examples of my favorite authors: Buscema, Charest, Texeira, Yu, Kubert ... because I think is important for an artist to see how from an initial sketch reaches a final illustration.
What I'm posting now is not my favorite one, but it's worth to check what I have said so far.

The principle of things

This was the first proposal for our character, Sage, we sent to our publisher. My brother sent an outline of the script and I attach a couple of pencilled pages. All this seemed to be enough, because we had green light for our series. I am sorry about the quality of reproduced pages, but I don't have the original and I am posting directly from a scan of the comic page where it was published.

Bunch of oldies

An old work than you already have seen some pages: Mortualia. From a closeup of the main character, Plague, to a splash-page, only to show the storytelling that I was doing 10-11 years ago, early into my professional career...

Caza...hunters

Cromsblood from ultimateconanfan.blogspot.com (if you are a true fan of sword & sorcery genre, please: visit the blog. You do not be let down), was kind enough to translate my Conan's short story Hunters.
Now I'm using that translation for you all to see.
Y'know: big hugs to Cromsblood!

So many visits...

So many visits lately. I only want to say "hello" to all the brand new friends from all places like Sydney (Australia), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Garland, Marietta, New Hampshire, Camarillo (United States), Hamm (Germany), Kamloops (Canada), London (United Kingdom), Athens (Greece), Reims (France), Tampere (Finland) and -thanks God- almost all the cities from Spain.
Thanks to all of you for seeing and, I hope, enjoying this artwork.

Wrap me single cover!

It's time to continue with the hypothetical lizard and other oddities from Mr. Moore. If in the previous post I showed the wraparound cover for the #1, now I'm showing the standard cover for the same issue. It is customary for Avatar Comics to launch the same number with two or three different cover versions. Now I'm not sure I showed this picture before, I think if I did, it was with the logo --that's why there's so much room at the top of the cover-- and color edited.
Hypothetical evil memory ...

Blinded Tower

This is the wraparound cover that I drew for the Hypothetical Lizard #1. Before receiving the script I was told that the story unfolded in a magical and mysterious world, full of witches, wizards and mystical and mythological beings. So I drew what I considered a dream world filled with flying carpets, gnomes, trolls and big towers for sorcerers. (Anecdote: I introduced an homage to a symbol of my hometown, Cartagena. It's called Blinded Tower: The oldest towershaped monuments preserved in the Iberian Peninsula).