The dream and the fear

art should be respected, but the respect starts with the artist

When it works, art seems easy. Effortless. Magical. You as the audience is pulled into the emotional experience any work of art introduces to the World. Nonetheless, art is the result of the artist’s journey, and that journey is, most often, anything but easy, and it’s an ever expanding journey which you must constantly be willing to venture out of the safe path to risk losing yourself hoping to discover new things.

Hellboy sketch I did today after breakfast.

This past weekend, another edition of the Lake Como Comic Art Festival took place at Villa Erba, in Cernobbio, on the shore of Lake Como, in Italy. It’s a comics festival centered in the appreciation of the art of comics that offers the fans (mostly collector) the chance to see comics artists working, creating drawings, and talk to them while they’re there. In other conventions, you’re there to promote the books and talk about the stories, but at LCCAF you want to see the original art, the the brush strokes, the type of paper used, the mix of art techniques some artists use while creating their pieces. For far away, in my studio in Brazil, I follow every edition online, watching friends of mine being invited to the festival, and I dream of one day going there myself to hopefully confirm that, there, the magical art of comics – which was born and built on the disposable, mass media mentality of newspapers – is really appreciated.

Still, dreams do not come without some troubling thoughts.

For some years now, I have started working on original commissions, where I can focus more on, and explore, the art. Usually, I worry more about the story than the art, which is one reason I don’t work with other creators more often, and why I stopped trying to draw regular Marvel and DC comic books: if I don’t like the story, if it doesn’t moves or excites me, the art suffers and I don’t like the experience (and I believe the readers won’t like the result also). Working with commissions offered me the opportunity to draw characters without this pressure about the story, and the whole point is to see said character in my style, my interpretation of that world, and I found a different kind of inspiration to work on these pieces than the original creative push of telling stories.

Still, I fear not really knowing the story behind the characters I’m drawing and end up with a shallower, soulless piece, and I spend a lot of time (too much time, according to my brother) researching each request, reading stories I haven’t read before, trying to understand the character instead of just drawing a cosplay version of said character.

I saw online one drawing of Hellboy done by a great artist at the Lake Como festival. I love his style in the comics I read from him, and in individual drawings like this his technique really flourishes, and his Hellboy, done in ink washes and colored pencils, looks amazing. Except he drew the RIGHT hand of doom on the left hand (which is one of my greatest fears). I was left with so many questions. Did he know it was the wrong hand? Have he read Hellboy before? Was that a request from the collector? Was it done on purpose?

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The story moves forward, slowly. I have been sketching poses for the introduction of a character. I have been sketching faces and outfits and mixing them in several combinations to see which stands out (as much as the character needs to stand out). There aren’t that many characters left to create on this story.

We’re almost at the top of the rollercoaster. There’s a lot of building on the way up.

It’s a completely different ride on the way down.

Be safe, be kind, be curious.

Pa-ZOW!

Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
May 19th, 2025