![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/77af1974-f922-41d4-8f13-54fbc2af16fb_rw_1200.gif?h=4f9f7bceb6fc004571b70b60ddf35aae)
The story of my comic starts in the city of Salamanca. These are the early concept art paintings that I did to visualize the mood, lighting and colour palettes of the environments for my story, which are inspired by real buildings of Salamanca.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/5f0aff50-cf28-4a3c-aace-b20fe841eed6_rw_1200.jpg?h=bf44462a67433dbdec65c50b7bdd1366)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/dbad3300-fdad-450d-991b-5fbe05abe7f6_rw_1200.jpg?h=b0be31f4fe6933b74cda23417dd355a3)
After writing the story, I developed the characters and sketched the pages on paper:
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/8601e1cd-7110-413e-9d46-74f2b0f6384b_rw_1200.jpg?h=9646170d79b8366e25f4be35b64db6be)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/0ae86b2a-2413-4ff4-ac3c-64a6950f9500_rw_1200.jpg?h=eb57cf92ae649f34700dab316b012620)
The next stage was to create thumbnail studies to design the composition of the pages:
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/af7afafb-ffcd-4a18-9e1b-1879bccbda7a_rw_1200.jpg?h=ea24acc1a9a4af529dc33681d7525a97)
The following sequence of images shows the process behind one of my pages:
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/558e0839-4bcd-4ddf-b716-228d05209909_rw_1200.gif?h=19b83d8395b334e1331edab8b7046a63)
Sketch on paper, thumbnail study, line art (I drew on Sketchbook Pro) and final colour (Photoshop).
You can see my colouring process in the following video. I use flat colours, cel shading for the shadows and a few lighting effects.
Speed painting video of the making of Salamanca Blues with song "Punk" by HoliznaCCO
I wrote an artice for Broken Frontier where I give a lot of insight about the research that I did to create Salamanca Blues. I comment on the visual references and ecological issues that inspired me. You can read it in the following link:
This is one of the images you'll find in the article. The scultures semi-buried on the desert of my comic are inspired on the real sculptures of the facade of Salamanca's San Esteban Monastery:
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/65d1ead8-736d-4f7c-b7ed-d6697956cf0f/65da96bf-1397-4ee4-b5b2-3437340f9b87_rw_1920.jpg?h=0c782ce1ed77cebf8b22086dddb9f43c)