And Happy New Year!

cesarlador
Jan 8
2 min read

I hope you are well and had a wonderfully relaxing holiday break! We had family and friends staying with us for 10 days out of the 2 week break so needless to say that it was fun but also intense.

Our visitors came with a boatload of laughs and good food but also with seasonal viruses so our household is a bit under the weather right now, nothing serious though!

New Year, new projects

Another big year for us as we are starting to talk logistics to move our family back to the other side of the world as my wife’s contract is ending in a few months. We are all eager to go back home to New Zealand though so we are rather excited.

But in the meantime, I have another comic book to finish, Book 4 of the Miles and Jones series. 150 pages to pencil, ink and paint :). I have been working on that in the last few days but also on the covers for the US edition of Book 3.

I have plenty of other ideas to work on, short comics, events to organise and attend, family to look after, a trip to Bologna children’s book fair to go to and many more exciting adventures to come.

Pausing and thinking about what I just wrote is kinda overwhelming and I am very aware that I also have to take care of myself. I am usually my latest priority and I have to work on that.

2026 has already started strong and if I have one wish for the world is to slow down. Deep inside, I believe that the world is spinning too fast and that quiet moments seem to be rare. I am going to make a conscious effort to stop and watch the clouds pass by from time to time.

And on the 26th of December

As you might have read in my previous post, I always find the few weeks before Christmas being pretty hectic, so I imagined how would Santa feel on the 26th of December…

I started by doing a rough sketch in a notebook

I scanned it and print it very very lightly on watercolor paper so I could ink it “properly” before painting it.

I am really enjoying the inking process for some reason, I love creating deep blacks to support the narrative. To do that I am using a pentel brush pen, which is a rechargeable pen with a brush tip, it allows me to create varying line width and adds some dynamism in my inking.

For some reason my favourite line of this drawing is this one, spontaneous, textured, round, just love it!