AMERICAN VAMPIRE

Retelling America's history with vampires. That is, more or less, what I understood Vertigo's new monthly series would be when AMERICAN VAMPIRE came out, and I thought it was an awesome idea. Even before reading the first story-arc of the book (writen by Stephen King) I started wondering which episodes of the history of the United States would look cool with vampires on them... and what about the foundation of Hells Angels in Fontana, California, in 1948? That's how I decided to make this fake comic cover.
I took the model for the main character here from mixing-up the portraits (taken by photographer Caterina Barjau) of two actual members of Hells Angels Barcelona. In fact, when finishing that bearded face, I remembered that Hells Angels guy did a small role (playing himself) in a music video I edited many years ago.
[American Vampire created by Scott Snyder. The Vertigo logo is a property of DC Comics.]

KEVIN

Although I must confess I'm not a big SIN CITY fan, I really like the way Miller handles blacks and whites to create his unique and distinctive noir look. A similar use of shadows and lights is what I tried here. Maybe that's why I decided to draw Kevin and his white glasses.
[The Dark Horse and Legend logos are property of Dark Horse Comics. Sin City and Kevin created by Frank Miller]

I PITY THE FOOL... BECAUSE I'M THE BEST IN WHAT I DO

Almost a month ago actor Donald Glover started a campaign to get the role of Peter Parker in an upcoming Spider-Man movie. There's been a lot of debate in the internet about whether having a black guy portraying Marvel's famous wallcrawler is a bad or a good idea, and even Stan Lee gave his two cents about it.
I myself have been a bit torn. I don't think it's necessary to have a black guy playing Peter Parker, as if the only way to create interesting black characters was to change white character's race. On the other hand, Spider-Man is a very well known character, and iconic characters end up beeing modified and versioned all along time. After all, if Shakespeare's plays have been set in WWII, in modern fictional Florida cities and even in the future, why can't Marvel have a black version of Spider-Man?
With that in mind, I decided to create a black version of one of Marvel's most famous characters. A lot of actors came to my mind, but none of them was more charismatic than Mr. T.
[Wolverine is a property of Marvel Comics]

TECHNO MUSIC

I've been feeling like creating a collage-style image since last month. Some days ago I was watching one of the videos I edited during my work at Sónar Festival when the idea popped up in my head. The final result is this colorful illustration where I tried to capture the variety of sounds, styles and textures techno music offers.

THE CROW

Some days ago I made this illustration for El Pique Del Mes blog, where every month a character or topic is chosen and different artists post their illustrations about it. This June the character was The Crow, and I decided to go with this cadaverous portrait. After all, The Crow is a guy who came back from the death.
[The Crow created by James O'Barr]

JASON AARON'S BEARD

Some months ago I made this all-digital illustration based on a picture of himself that writer Jason Aaron posted on his message board. Aaron liked the picture and has been using it as his profile picture in the Internet since the last two weeks (which honors me, of course).
The origin of this illustration was a thread about beards. When Aaron posted a picture of him, someone joked about the fact that he could be a character in Scalped (the awesome Vertigo book Aaron writes) and I tried to imagine how would Aaron look if he was indeed a character in his book.

NORTHLANDERS

This illustration combines digital drawing and a mix of digital and watercolor painting for the background. I wanted to oppose the warm colors of the character (his skin, his hair) with a cold palette of blues in the background, symbolizing the wild temper of Norse warriors against the weather of those regions.
Brian Wood is a great writer, and that, combined with the fact that I love history books/comics, made me want to read NORTHLANDERS since the moment I knew this comic existed. I also love the idea that every story-arc is a different tale with different characters, moving from a time and place to another.
[Northlanders created by Brian Wood]

LINCOLN RED CROW

This illustration is a mix of hand-drawing and photoshop. I used pencil to render Red Crow's wrinkles to make them look more natural. One of my main problems was where to put the name of the character.

Lincoln Red Crow in one of the most complex and interesting characters in SCALPED, and I can easily say he has become my favorite one of the book.
[Lincoln Red Crow created by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guéra]

WOLVERINE

This is an all-digital illustration. My first idea was to keep Wolverine's drawing in black and white with a red background, but the character looked too lifeless to me and I ended up coloring it too. I also wanted to give the line of the drawing a rough, wild feeling, which is a style that I keep loving more and more.

Some months ago I showed this Wolverine illustration to a comic editor, who didn't quite like it because found it not to be very Wolverine-ish (oddly enough, it wasn't a Marvel editor). Sometimes I feel kind of tired of all those badass pin-ups where we always see him furious, and that's why I wanted to draw a hieratical Logan. Anyway, I guess that editor was right and that illustration (which I just realized I drew about a year ago) isn't the typical Wolverine we are all used to, so I decided to try a similar pin-up portraying an angrier Logan this time.

The model for this illustration was pal Juan Carlos Fernández.
[Wolverine is a property of Marvel Comics]

THE GUY FROM HAWAII

I mixed photography and digital drawing here. My challenge was to give the character a colorful touch (that the hawaiian shirt gave me) while keeping a noir feeling on the whole cover, and that's why I only used two colors (black a read are very noir colors for me) on the backgound.

For a long time now I've had in my mind that character who I used to call The Guy From Hawaii. Some days ago I filmed a short with actor Santi Gimeno-Bayón. Looking at how he was dressed, I realized that I had created a character for that short that was unintentionally inspired in The Guy From Hawaii character, so I decided to use him as the model for this illustration.