Cleaning one's garage leads to wonderful rediscoveries like this one. From my small remaining original art collection comes a pencil page of Delta 99 by the marvelous Carlos Gimenez. I wrote about Gimenez, and Delta, in an earlier post.
I bought this piece several years ago on eBay, when a Canadian collector was selling off his collection of originals. He had great tastes...lots of fine stuff by European cartoonists. This was the only one I could afford. It's in pencil on a lightweight 11x17 inch piece of Bristol board. The collector knew Gimenez but apparently not Delta 99, because he didn't recognize the source of this art.It's obviously tied to Los Sucios, the story I excerpted in my earlier post. I gather it was an unused cover idea, though it may have been intended for the splash (I favor the former explanation because Delta 99 splashes usually had a panel or two recapping Delta's origin before the splash image).
It's such a clean pencil job that at first I wondered if Gimenez had light-boxed it from a rough. But inspection shows enough second thoughts and draw-throughs to suggest that Gimenez is just one of those guys who can draw it right the first time--darn him!
2 comments:
I wonder if the drawing you bought was done on tracing paper or not. Carlos would usually pencil a rough on a standard sheet of paper and then trace it tighter on tracing paper which he would then put on a lightbox and ink on his favorite paper, a "Caballo" paper, which is very similar to the Bristol but much lighter. Scratching on its surface was a no-no and there are very little or no "ink mistakes" on his originals (he has been, after all, drawing the same picture 3 times). His take on a what a comic-book artist is, is actually excellent. He says drawing comic-books is like being married to a very ugly, dumb girl, who you just love too much to actually quit and is why you remain with her, lol!
It's definitely not tracing paper. From what you write I'm guessing it's on the Caballo paper, although in pencil for some reason. Having been lightboxed would certainly explain the assurance of the drawing--this would have been the second time around. Did Gimenez ink directly on the light box or trace, then ink?
I love his description of a comic artist. I blush to say he nailed it right on the head. I'm still in love with the same dumb, ugly girl.
Post a Comment