The shell and the insides
Hi. You probably noticed I skipped another week over here, and might skip more in the near future. Writing these letter don’t exactly take a lot of time, and I like to do it, but at a certain point you start to do a lot of these “don’t take a lot of time” things every day and the thing that does take a whole lot of time, which is making comics, and which is the thing that I really love to do, starts to get left to the side a little bit, because by the time I get into the right headspace to write or draw the pages, something comes up and makes me stop even before I start.
So, less writing letters, more writing comics.
I started the new commission list with the request of Corto Maltese, the classic Hugo Pratt character. I got carried away with the baskets in the foreground, and they’re almost the main characters of this scene (hopefully they make the viewer wonder where on Earth Corto is this time).
Not every drawing needs background, though. Sometimes a better composition involves embracing the power of negative space.
After doing the Corto piece, my next request was of a girl reading. I started imagining where she was and, like I did with the previous commission, started to gather inspirational images of poses and places on Pinterest. On the preliminary sketch, the girl was sitting near a window, and several paintings and photographs surrounded the frames of the window. I played a little with the idea of superimposing a hand holding the book on the extreme foreground, doubling on the theme of the drawing, but eventually I focused on the most elegant pose I could do, and just started to think about what clothes she would wear in this relaxed summer inspired image.
What is she reading? What’s inside that little book?
Poetry, most likely.
I like to think the book was a gift from someone this girls really likes, and every time she opens it, her mind travels towards her special friend.
JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER
Last week, the print version of Scott Snyder and Tula Lotay’s Barnstormers came out, and I drew one of the many variant covers of the issue.
I like that they chose to print my variant without the logo and the copy. People that find the cover on the shelves of the comic book stores might be confused about what title it is, but maybe the confusion also brings along a little curiosity to pick the book up and have a look inside.
TALKING ABOUT THE INSIDES
The internet has opened the window for people to discover online artists from all over the World, and through the internet I have been able to find inspiration and connect with friends old and new, but I’m old in the way that I really like the feeling of reading comics on paper, and I think that’s still mainly because I create comics thinking about them to be experienced on paper.
cover by Mike Del Mundo
In September, Image Comics will publish the third issue of Untold Tales of I Hate Fairyland, which will feature the short story Bá and I made playing with Skottie Young’s crazy characters. All these stories were initially published online on Skottie’s Substack, but as I read them as they came out, I thought I wasn’t the only one making the story with the print version in mind. We were all creating pages (which happened to come out online first).
You can find out all the details about the book clicking HERE!
NOT BAD.
In the end, this letter had a whole bunch of images, talked about commissions, covers, pages and inspiration. Not bad.
Let’s hope the next one keeps it up.
Be safe. Be kind. Be curious.
Pa-ZOW!
Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
July 10th, 2023