Winter is a time of austerity for London’s wildlife. Every day from the office window I see a squirrel tossing from side to side, from branch to branch. Looking for a forgotten nut, a lonely seed or anything edible really. I’m glad I don’t need to hunt for breakfast.
In front of our favourite comic shop in London – Gosh comics. If you are in town, you should check it out. Gosh Comics, 1 Berwick Street, London W1F 0DR, www.goshlondon.com
Many years ago, coming back from school, a book seller entered the bus. My eyes got caught by a book with the cover showing a mysterious blue skinned warrior. It was different to anything I have seen before and intrigued, I took out carefully my saved pocked money and purchased the book. That´s how my fascination for Indian mythology started. Until today my work is influenced by this theme. Our graphic novel “The Golden Lion” was inspired by great Indian epics such as Ramayana and The Mahabharata.
Some weeks ago I created a poster showing a classic scene from Ramayana.
The scene shows the monkey warrior Hanuman, who needs to cross the ocean in order to deliver a message to the princess Sita – wife of his master – held prisoner in Lanka. At this moment, Hanuman´s past is revealed:
” Inside of you reside powers beyond human awareness. When you were a child you jumped to the sky and tried to eat the Sun itself, thinking it was ripe mango. Hanuman, the extent of this vast ocean is no barrier to your power.
Hanuman looks to the sky and the sea waters. And he sees an endless blue. Blue as the skin of his master – Rama. He doesn´t hesitate, runs and jumps surrendering himself entirely to his task. As someone who dissolves himself in his own devotion. He crosses the skies and disappears from sight in the infinite blue.
I decided to used a more iconic graphic style to convey the “surrender to blue” message. It took me many sketches to find the ideal shapes. Once satisfied with the sketches I scanned the illustration and added colours in Photoshop.
This mythological scene reminds me that sometimes we need to take the risk and jump to achieve our goals in our lives. We need to surrender ourselves to our own ideals.
DavidÂ
After a long pause working on the script of our graphic novel, we are back to the drawing table. I know it took a long time however comics creation is much more time consuming than most people think. At the same time in terms of freedom and artistic expression it´s very personal rewarding. You don´t need a few hundred thousand dollars to explode a car and there are no producers to tell you that the main character needs a romance interest to make the story more appealing to the general public. You just need paper, a pen and an idea.
In the picture below, I´m using water-colours in a dream sequence for our next project.
The speech about Friday comics on Monday was great. Very engaging audience and interesting questions. It was my first time at Foyles and I was amazed how nice and big the bookstore is. I´m definitely coming back soon.
Basically I spoke about the comics we create and how our Brazilian background influences the stories we tell. Thank you, Nicola and Sarah from Laydeez do Comics for the opportunity.
You are all invited for a presentation about comics on the 21st January in London by David Jesus Vignolli.
As the next guest speaker at Laydeez do Comics, he will be talking about process, technique and how his background influences his storytelling.
Find out more here:Â http://www.laydeezdocomics.com/
Hope to see you all there!
