Today I want to share something really special to me, because it's part of the roots of my culture. It's the legend of the coca leaf.
My country Bolivia has so many ancient legends that I'm planning to share with this beautiful community, starting with this one.
I've always wanted to try to make stories with my drawings, with my art. But for whatever reason I didn't finished my previous projects until now!
I remember when I was a kid I had a book, a novel with images that I used to read over and over again, it was very dark, about witchcraft or something like that, I don't even remember the name of this book, but I think that's where I started to have a passion with comic books.
It was my dream to make one, one day. And today is the start of this journey...finally!
Bolivian legends are always so captivating and mystical, it's like a genre of stories that mix the reality with the spiritual in a very subtle way. The ancient wisemen tell these stories from generations to generations, until today.
These traditions are disappearing unfortunatly, but that's actually the main purpose with this series that I'm starting today, to give a more modern take on ancient bolivian legends.
This first episode is about the mythical coca leaf, that has so much history with my culture, and also has many beautiful and also tragic ancient legends that have been a part of our life and culture since the dawn of time.
And one of them is this one, the legend of the Coca, it's about the Spirit of the Moon called "Mama Killa", in quechua language means "Mother Moon", she is the spirit of the moon... and the story goes like this:
That was the legend of the coca leaf, I hope you liked it, I'm so happy that I was able to finish this project right on the day of the lunar eclipse, it was a wonderful coincidence, because I started to draw the first story boards a few days ago when I didn't even knew that there was an eclipsein the first place, and also the planets have aligned in this past few days, how special to make this, it was a beautiful surprise for me, since my roots and culture are very much linked to this legend of the moon.
I'm going to share this legend with people from my country too because it's not a very well known for many, so for that I translated it to spanish and I know some people here on hive also do, so here is the legend of the Coca leaf in spanish.
TECHNICAL PROCESS
Now I'm gonna share the technical info of this project in case some of you want to try to make something similar.
First of all I used an app called Autodesk Sketchbook, because it's the one that I find more user friendly but I also recommend the Infinite painter app.
First of all, if you have an idea in mind I would recommend you to write a script, that is very inportant, in my case I started doing the sketch of the village, and without the script and let me tell you... it's not the best way to start, I learned it tge hard way because it takes too long, and sometimes it's frustrating, so from now on for my next projects, I'm gonna make a script in the firt place, it's like a map to see where you're going so you don't get lost on the way.
And also if you have an script, in the first place you will get the chance to find cool references according to the story board!
Unlike me that I started like a newbie without a reference lol!
I started here:
I was completely lost at the beginning...until I got my references, these are the ones I used:
https://www.placerespr.com/dona-ines-maria-sembrando/
https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2020/12/three-rare-icons-of-virgin-mary-as.html?m=1
https://www.shutterstock.com/es/search/mother-mary-blessing?page=9
And this is why you have to make a script:
I wasted time doing this image because in the end didn't even end up in the story!
Well , you learn on the way I guess that's how it goes, this is really important specially if you are gonna make a large story.
Anyways I made a few drawings and I put them in a single page to get a general view of the project (and also for motivation) , so when I did that I realized how important the script was!
Anyways...another thing that is importand is to organize your layers because I wasted a large amount of time fixing errors, if you don't organize them you are gonna waste precious time. I recommend you to separate the layers by colors.
Another tip is to take a screenshot of the main picture so you can have the same value of color for the other ones because if you dont get the same colors it will not look good, because of continuity, specially when you have different shots and angles of the same scene, in my case the hardest part was to get the same color of the purple sky.
Another inportant thing is to select your font,sometimes we don't pay attention to that detail, but it's really inportant.
I changed a few times all the images that were already done, because it didn't felt right. In my case I wanted a fantasy font, because it was a legend and at first I found a cool one, but I don't know the name...there are some sites where you upload the picture and it tells you the font it uses like this one for example:
https://www.myfonts.com/es/pages/whatthefont
I would recommend you finally to use filters, I didnt realized this until the last part of this project, but the filter in really important to get the mood. In this case I used "Hagrid" in the Pixlr app, because as you can see the originals are really pale, and with filters you get a specific mood to be in the same vibe of the theme of the story. In my case I wanted to get a fairy tale style like Disney,.very cartoonish or something like that.
Without filter:
With filter:
It really makes a difference!
That's all the tips that I can give you for now from this experience, I want to make more of this types of stories, I hope you like it!
Until next time with more art!
