Freeway Part 9

 There is one sequence in Freeway where Alex takes his girl, Chloe, on a tour of downtown Los Angeles. Alex is a huge fan of downtown and wants to show the beautiful architecture and explain the history of this area. Chloe, like a lot of people, feels that downtown  is place to be avoided, like she asks, "Isn't it full of homeless and crime?" Alex wants to debunk this myth and takes Chloe on a magical mystery tour of downtown. To draw this tour, I took many pictures and drew many sketches to render an accurate look of the downtown core. Here is some of my work that I created ten years ago. All these sketches were drawn on the spot with pen and marker on sketch paper.

Fifth Street.

Grand Ave.

Looking Down on Hill St.

Los Angeles Central Library.

Three Sisters

Beverly

Jennifer

Emily

Freeway Part 8

The next stage is drawing in each individual car.

 

Again I photographed many vehicles on the streets for reference.

I find drawing cars to be quite challenging. It's creating a vehicle that looks solid but still has it's fluid lines without making it look like a marshmallow. Then to draw a hundred more.

 Once I got the details set, I began the inking and rendering.

Ending up with the finished drawing below.

Freeway Part 7

As the title suggest, a good part of the book takes place on the L.A freeway system. I tried to draw actual locations on the freeway. With the help of family members who would either drive or shoot for me, I tried to photograph the whole freeway route that Alex takes in the story. Here are some photos of the 134/5 Freeway junction, looking east, from the back of my brother's truck.

Using these pictures as reference, I drew a rough drawing of the freeway without any vehicles.

After drawing the freeway I needed to put the cars in.  

I drew just simple boxes and shapes to represent the cars. By doing it this way, I did not worry myself about the details. Instead its just to see how the general composition will work and how many cars I will eventually  have to draw. The details came later.

Freeway Art 13

Freeway is here.

www.fantagraphics.com/freeway

Freeway Art 12

Freeway is here.

www.fantagraphics.com/freeway

Freeway

Freeway is here! I just received my copies from the distributors. It looks great! I want to thank everyone at Fantagraphics for their hard work putting Freeway out. Go to www.fantagraphics.com/freeway to take a look.
Mark

Girl in a Grey Coat

Ink, gouache and watercolor on watercolor paper.

Size 5.5 inches by 8.5 inches.

Freeway Art 11

Freeway coming soon.

www.fantagraphics.com/freeway

Freeway Interview for Robot 6

Check out the Freeway interview I did for Robot 6 blog with Chris Mautner for Comic Book Resources.
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/02/creator-qa-hop-on-mark-kalesnikos-freeway/