"Vincenzo" the human warrior

Actually, the idea was to call him Breogàn, since I was inspired by the ancient Celtic warriors and Breogàn was the name of the Celic warrior who, according to a legend, was the founder of Galicia (that is where I'm living in this moment), but my better-half (a true Galician man) named him 'Vincenzo'. When I asked why he replied to me: "Ma perché vince sempre!" that is the Italian for: "Of course because he always wins!". Yes, the Italian name "Vincenzo" sounds a lot like the verb "vincere" that means "to win".

At that point, with a motive explaned in my own native language... how could I help choosing this name?

A small favour

At the end of last year I was hosted ad a guest in a fantastic sci-fi graphic novel about time travels and adventures and all those cool stuff written by John Grimes and Cal Palmquist. Now it's finally out. If you are in US you can find it  at the next Florida Super Con and at Yampa Bay Comic Con, in any case you can find more information at the facebook page of the comic or read some sample at https://tapas.io/series/SmallFavor

This is the black and white version of my panel:

The wizard

Work in progress for a random wizard

Elf sorceress wip

This is definitely a work in progress time. Here there is the first step of a commission: behold the elf sorceress pencil sketch.

Work in progress mermaid

It's an idea I had been thinking for a while, at the moment it's just a work in progress... let's see what happens

Waiting for Maruxaina

Maruxaina is a blond haired mermaid who, according to Galician legends, uses to live in the Xan Vello cave in the Farallóns islands, alluring mariners with her beauty and her voice. 

Since it's being a while I'm planning an illustration dedicated to her, it's time for me to become a bit more familiar with merimaids' anatomy. So here there is a preparatory doodle that probably will be cleaned and coloured while I make my mind on how exactly I want to picture this blond fish-lady

New baby is coming

Something is boiling in the pot. The current time is busy: I'm working for the very new publisher SouthEast Comics (my issue of the superhero series Alfa will be out more or less about next Christmas), and doing some colour art for another steampunk project I'll tell you something about in the future, and waiting news about an old project to come to life... but there is no rest for the wicked and so here I'm with a personal solo project. 

I'm still at the very beginning, but something is coming out and I can't help to share the work in progress of a panel in the page 2 of the dossier.

Who entered the pub of the village surprising so hard people in there? 

The mai character of this project and I hope to introduce him soon to you.

Temple in the jungle

One night of insomnia with the only company of a documentary about Bali. This is the result:

Maybe I'll colour it.

Pencil pages from La Montagne d'Ambre

In nostalgic mood today... proper time to share some old page in pencil version from La Montaigne d'Ambre: my most beloved unpublished work.

What are monsieur Les Rennes and Joel speaking about? Probably we'll never know.

Omi the Brave

Character design from the main character of an old project settend in stone age.

New characters sketch

Randomly working on possibly new characters: a lor of new stories in my mind, but lack of focus... we'll see what happens.

Anathema Device

From the novel written by Terry Pratchett e Neil Gaiman, mi idea of how should Anathema Device look like.

what am I doing?

Yep, I know, I sort of disappeared lately... as usual.

I'm sorry, it's just I'm working on some project proposals and I have no free time and I can't focus enought to complete my usual random illustrations.

Next week I'll share some pages I'm working on, in the manwhile, all I can show is a unfinished illustration I started some week ago, just to make some exercise with digital colour.

I promise I'll finish it sooner or later, but in the meanwhile here it is!

Saturday night break

It's being a very very busy time lately, I am working on two project and I hope I'll share soon with you some good news and some pieces of information about what I am working on, but for the moment I'll be quiet.

But yesterday night I was a bit in a bad mood so I decided to take a break from work and draw just for myself. This is the result: I'll try to finish it a bit a time in my spare time so I'll think I'll do another wip-post.

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Gun WIP

And there we are with the step by step process for the Girl with a Gun I posted some days ago.
 

1) as usual the start point is the pencil drawing on common print paper.

2) Cleaning up the illustration: after I scanned it and opened the file with adobe photoshop I start ereasing all the pencil line in excess and all the grey shadows. I'm afraid I forgot to take a screenshot of the final result after the clean up, but you should easily imagine it, it's like the image above but more tidy ;)

3) The flat colour part. It's when I choose what palette I'll use to create the atmosphere I had in my mind while I was designing. I simply fill up the different areas with a colour shade that will be a sort of halfway between the darkest colour I'll use for the shades and the lighter colour I'll use for the birght points.

4) Colouring the lineart. I simply change the colour of the whole lineart making it more similar to the base colour of the area. It's a little detail but the image looks quite different.

5) Volumes time: with a soft brush I try to armonize the lineart with the base flat colour and, while doing it, I try to make the image a bit more tridimensional casting shadows according to the volumes as the figure was under a neutral light source.

6) Shadows. I simply paint the shadows according to the lightsource I chose. I usually paint the shadow with a colour (dark green-brown in this case) to suggest the idea of the kind of light is shining in the picture. After I painted the shadows I set the layer on 'multiply' and low the opacity.

7) Light. Now it's time to add some light spots, I go on using the soft brush and paint with a bright colour the spots where the light goes, I try to be consistent with the different materials (i.e. the light has a different effect on humas skin than on the fabric) but I don't always suceed.

8) Final atmosphere. That's the final part of my work: I simply add some detalis like the wallpaper and give a stronger light.

I hope you enjoyed the work in progess process :)

Disclaimer: I summarised a lot, but I usually work the steps 5, 6 and 7 on an area at time, starting a new area once the previous one is complete but it was simpler to explain this way.

Gun colour

This is the final result, in the next days I'll post the wip :)

Gun

Working on a new illustration which I will share the work in progress of.
This is the first step: pencil on common paper.

Two external inspirations this time: I took the ideas of hat and hairdressing here : https://it.pinterest.com/pin/505880970619728007/ while the gun looks a bit like the wonderful steampunk gun Luca made for me some yeras ago.

Some sketches again

And here there are some sketches again. Characters will come soon, very soon, and pieces of information will come with them, but now it's still time for some background preparatory work.

Page 27 WIP 2: pencil

Very busy period at Fedzeppelin's place. I've just the time to drop here the second part of the WIP.
As you can see, something has changed from the layout page and I can assure you: it always happens.
Hope you enjoy.

Page 27 WIP: layout

Here I go again, after a very long time.
I'm sorry but it took a while to recover and I've got a bit of flu still. Anyway here I am back to work and to this blog. I'll update you all about what happened in France, as soon as I have some proper news to share, in the meanwhile I'm back to the steampunk project. I've to draw a couple of pages, so I thought it would be nice to show the whole creative process.
Are you ready?
Very well: here there is Page 27 Layout.

The layout is the first step a drawer makes when he (or she) have to project a page.

Of course, before there is a script: a page where the author writes what will happen in every panel of the page. Sara wrote the script for me with all the datas and reccommendations and dialogues, but I'll not share it because it's in Italian (and somehow in a sort of 'code language') and it would take a long time to translate it.

Anyway here there is the layout. You can see that at this point the draw is not so accurate, somewhere not even proper, that's because it's a sort of quick sketch of the page, it's useful to see how the page will look like at the end of the work, and to decide how the areas will be filled.