I don’t have much time to write these days. But it’s been a month since my previous newsletter, and I wanted to say hello. Europe is being ravaged by long-lasting storms this week, and most of us are curled up on our sofas with blankets and takeaway, waiting for the last day of rain (👀). I’m in a couch away from home, because we picked exactly the right time to go on holiday to one of the rainiest cities in Portugal. But there are things to look forward to, so keep reading!

Lunar New Year Exhibition at Mori Homemade Cafe

If you happen to be in London this and next month, and enjoy matcha and cake, Mori Homemade cafe is hosting an exhibition about the Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse from February 17th to March 17th. There will be thirty paintings on display, all by different artists, created for the event. They are printed using Risograph, a method that overlays colours on top of each other to create different combinations. The final result is not fully predictable because colours are not all printed at the same time, but here’s what mine might look like, more or less:

I wanted to paint something close to my heart, and was thinking about how much I’m looking forward to taking our little one to see fireworks. East Asian culture is a big part of my life in London, from friends to favourite foods and places where I hang out; I hope this silly drawing brings out how much I admire it.

About the exhibition itself, other people drew actual horses, which I kind of dodged with the hat situation, because I’m hopeless! If you’re interested in seeing everybody else’s work and perhaps acquire one of 20 limited edition copies of this (or just feel like exploring a new, delicious cafe), here’s a link to the shop in Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jKpETL7KBYQtYqN89

The Last Day of Rain (eh)

Last year, I promised you’d see a comic book come to life! It’s coming along quite slowly, but at least this month I managed to prepare the file with all the pages and the script on top for reference, so now all (😅) I have to do is draw:

I did find a couple of minutes to thumbnail the first page… It’s absolutely horrid, as the first thumbnails of all my books are, but it puts things in motion, maybe? I’ll show you, but don’t make anything of it and don’t try to decipher it. It would be a futile effort. 😬

Since I’m not doing any comic book events in 2026, I’ll have a bit more time to work on this, so hopefully it will be finished by the end of the year, even if it’s over 100 pages! When it’s closer to completion, I’ll put together a campaign on Kickstarter or find another way to bring this final volume to those of you who are interested in getting ahold of it.

What Comes After?

A friend once asked me this question about finishing The Last Day of Rain. Back then, I couldn’t reply because I thought it would never end, but now that it’s (kind of) close, I have been thinking about it.

Because I learned everything myself, this was always meant as sort of a graduation project, to use as an excuse to learn how to create worlds, characters and stories. It’s not perfect at all, but I did learn a lot and certainly won’t stop after this!

I have more stories to tell, for which I will probably use shorter formats. That way, I can focus on perfecting the script and the art and also finish in less time. Honestly, my brain is twitching with so many ideas that I don’t have time to realise. This will possibly also lead to collaboration with other writers and artists (fingers crossed).

I also want to explore different media, like single-narrative illustration, animation, maybe children’s books, which I got a lot into lately for obvious reasons. Regardless of format, I want to focus on art about human connection, which is why I started this whole thing in the first place and kind of forgot a bit along the way.

But that’s all in the future, so we’ll see. For now, there’s life, and a 100-page script. 😛

What are YOU looking forward to once the rain is gone?

Wishing you all an excellent 2026 ahead!

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com, as well as a few other books and art prints.

You can also find me more or less active on Instagram and Bluesky.

Hi there,

I hope you’re doing great! Getting ready for the end of another year, and hopefully for some family time. I’m sure you have your giant coat out too… or shorts, if you’re reading this from the southern hemisphere.

It’s been a while since I wrote a newsletter, because I’ve been busy helping my little one grow. There are two of us doing it, and it still takes all our time! Which we don’t mind, because we’re rewarded with boisterous baby laughter every day. So I’ve been trying, but never quite got to finishing any lines of thought, so those will have to wait for the new year! There’s one, in particular, that I’m quite excited to explore further, about comparing the way we are taught to write stories in different parts of the world.

The final part of The Last Day of Rain is also in the works, even if going at a slower pace. I’m also done with the script, which is around one hundred pages! It will be a challenge, but it will be fun (I think?) I’ll have to cut back on a few things next year if I want to finish it, and a big one is conventions. At the same time, staying away from events will help me reflect on why I’m doing this, and hopefully create a little more!

Because of “AI”, this was a weird year for everyone in one way or another, be it artists, programmers, accountants or anything else, really. But as it approaches the end, it’s becoming clearer by the minute that nothing replaces a person’s insight and creativity.

So keep going, because you matter. The proof is that no one is baking mince pies for chatbots today (well, I bet someone is, but that’s not the point).

Wishing you an excellent holiday season and see you in 2026!

- Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com, as well as a few other books and art prints.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while I send a summary of what I’ve been up to, so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there! Welcome to my monthly dose of blabber and babble.

As usual, I left more than a month in between newsletters, and there’s a lot to say! In this issue, I talk about writing scripts, rekindling purpose, and a couple of small projects I worked on.

As usual, the newsletter ends with a film recommendation that I hope you’ll like.

The Last Day of Rain: How It’s Going

In the middle of searching for, adapting to a new full-time job and preparing for a newborn (surprise!), I didn’t have a lot of time left to draw in the last few months. However, now that things have calmed down, I finally managed to pick up the script for the final volume of The Last Day of Rain!

I already had a first draft, so I began with that. I made a few more changes to the ending parts after reading Manga in Theory and Practice, by Hirohiko Araki, and I feel I’m approaching something that I’m fairly happy with. Never fully happy, of course, because that doesn’t happen with me or anyone I know.

The initial version made Carol more of an observer who saw events unfold. After the changes, she feels more in control of what happens. Which is how it should be: she’s the protagonist, after all!

Due to parts of the story having to be explained via dialogue, one or another passage might sound a bit like a soap opera, I think, but I hope it will be a fun soap opera.

ALERT: Scroll past the image below to avoid spoilers. 🙃 And if you do read this and don’t know anything about the story, it’s not always this soapy! It is, however, a sci-fi mystery with a love story at its core, so it will have its moments.

Needless to say, pages thirty-eight and nine are probably halfway through the book, so this final chapter is shaping up to have around eighty pages. I refuse to split it, though! I’d rather spend more time on it than having to go through releasing two more chapters. Believe it or not, marketing comics is harder work than making them!

Once this is done and dusted, I’m planning to clean up and re-letter the whole thing and publish it in the form of a single graphic novel. That will take a while, but I think it will be worth it!

The work on this story will be the focus of the newsletter until the end of the year, from script to concept art and to finally developing the book itself, and I’m hoping to share a lot of behind-the-scenes content. So if you’re interested in seeing it evolve, you are very much welcome to press the subscribe button below:

Subscribe now

Rediscovering the Purpose of my Art

I haven’t been drawing a lot lately, but not only due to life changes. The biggest reason is, probably, that trying so hard to get my art and comic books noticed has taken a bit of my passion away. It made me forget why I do it in the first place. So I needed to stop. To get a normal job that pays the bills and makes me feel safe, instead of chasing freelancing in a world increasingly populated by AI, where hard work appears to have no value anymore and everybody thinks that prompting will save their lives (it won’t).

And so I had time to breathe. And to remember why I started doing it, whether I want to continue and what motivates me to do so.

I want to create beauty. And connection. Stories, whether in text or image, have helped me cope with many pivotal moments in life. And that’s what I want to do. To create images and stories that give others comfort or catharsis. That helps them deal with emotions, even if they don’t know that it’s what’s happening.

Each artist is different, and many create only for themselves. But for me, it is not an individual activity. I do it for connection, not for reclusion. I don’t do it to relax at the end of a busy day, either. I do it for mental stimulation and because I love to learn, and I love feeling the engines of my foggy brain moving when mixing fresh new knowledge with creativity.

That’s why I want to keep learning, and getting better, and creating more. So that I can become good enough to be able to make others feel.

We have recently redone our office space here at home to create room for the new arrival, and I used the opportunity to install a few cork boards in front of my desk. A big chunk of them is now full of images that I love and want to use as inspiration in the months that are coming. I hope that, instead of a digital board, having these tangible bits of paper that I look at every day will help me stay true to the emotional type of art that I’m looking to achieve.

There’s a mix of artists who favour soft edges and light colours and those who go for moody palettes and sharp corners, and perhaps I’ll need to choose, or maybe I’ll be able to come up with something that sits comfortably in between.

All these people are extremely hard-working with a perfect grasp of fundamentals, and I won’t ever be as good as them, but it’s important to have something to look up to. 🤓

Over the next few months, I am planning to share some quick sketching sessions based on these on my Instagram page, should you be interested:

Claudia's Instagram

Comics Disability Project - Cats And Dogs

This month, I had the chance to collaborate with Jess Hannar on a project that sheds light on the struggles of people with disabilities who will lose their benefits due to a recent UK government policy. Unfortunately, has already been approved in Parliament.

She’s working with a few artists by giving us scripts to illustrate, which are then posted on Instagram.

Here’s the result of my one:

This was so engaging to work on, and I’m happy to have contributed, at least a tiny bit, to an important cause. I hope people will continue talking about this, so that at least parts of the policy can be reworked, if not all.

I’m also looking forward to collaborating with Jess again in the future. She’s a truly lovely person and her ideas deserve to be seen.

A Navy Bird

Last year, we heartbreakingly and suddenly lost a beloved member of the WIP Comics community. Navy was a cartoonist and tutor, besides being an excellent human being with multitudes of worlds and stories contained in her mind, waiting for the right moment to come to life. She’s dearly missed by all of us.

So in our yearly anthology, we are paying her tribute by drawing little navy birds, her online nickname, which will populate a section of the book. I tried to capture the essence of her work and personality in mine, if such a thing is even possible:

In case you’re interested in having a look at the anthology itself and getting your hands on the work of over sixty emerging artists, you can find it on Kickstarter until the end of the month.

Infinity Anthology on Kickstarter

Film recommendation: She Taught Love

I loved this film. It starts as a seemingly normal, perhaps dull, romance, but you soon realise that one of the main characters is a covert comic book nerd who created a whole fantasy series together with her dad.

The way the film reveals layers about the characters, starting with a sophisticated world and ending with a nerdy, who-cares vibe. How the relationship between the protagonists isn’t shallow, and feels like actual love and trust.

It’s another one with not-so-good reviews on IMDB, but once you look under the surface, they are mostly excellent. However, the few people who didn’t connect to the film really didn’t connect to it and brought the rating down. These days, it feels like people are so numbed by endless streams of entertainment that they expect every single thing they watch to make them jump out of their seats.

Either way, it was an entertaining watch! You can find it on Disney Plus, Hulu and possibly other streaming services.

Next Markets and Conventions

Here’s where you can find me until the end of the year:

• 30 of August - Urban Makers (Old Spitalfields Market, London)

• 27th-28th of September 2025 - The Lakes International Comic Art Festival (Bowness-on-Windermere)

• 15th-16th November 2025 - Thought Bubble Comic Convention (Harrogate)

And in case you can’t make it to any of those, my online shop is always open (it warms my heart whenever someone picks up something from there, especially because it’s rare):

• Online shop

• Etsy shop

And that’s all for today, folks!

Hope to see you soon!

- Claudia

Thank you for reading, and for your continued support! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com, as well as a few other books and art prints.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while I send a summary of what I’ve been up to, so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

All said, let’s begin!

Intro

Hello! I’m a comic book artist and author leaning into science fiction, and I’m here to share thoughts and tidbits about the things that I try, whether they fail or succeed. You can see previous posts at blog.claudiamatosa.com or some info about my work at claudiamatosa.com.

The machine

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to balance creating work that I love and keeping an online presence without burning out. There is so much content out there these days, with and without “artificial intelligence”. For a long time, I’ve been feeling like I’m adding nothing to the mix, apart from feeding a soulless entertainment machine. An infinite-scrolling beast that chews up my motivation and leaves me wondering what I’m doing this for anyway. (I’m sorry about the pseudo-philosophical rant.)

While trying to grow my following on social platforms, I’m not spending time learning, practising and creating, which is what I really like to do. Everyone says that social media is necessary for a healthy artistic practice, and maybe it’s true, but the amount of time and management it requires these days feels very unhealthy. Especially because, while using it, I have to interact daily with content that constantly manipulates my mood.

It shouldn’t have to be like that. I want to share, but I want to do it at my own rhythm and with people who might be interested in what I have to show them.

This is why, since last year, I’ve been running an experiment with a small group.

How a comic book comes to life

Since I started working on volumes three and four of The Last Day of Rain, I have been sending updates on the process and progress of creating the books to a small list of people who pre-ordered them via Kickstarter. I call it an experiment because I didn’t feel confident enough to present my messy process to the world, and this was a good compromise.

The plan was to send something every week to a smaller group, and a monthly update to all backers of the project. Below are some of the images shared during that time. The updates varied and included world and character building, sketches and finished artwork, and also thoughts about the process.

I think the experiment worked well, and gave way to many interesting conversations throughout the year! And especially, it gave me the chance to look back and think, sometimes to celebrate, and others to reflect on what could have been done better.

And so it’s time to try this with a larger audience. As I work on the final volume and finish the graphic novel, I will use this newsletter/blog to share my process. There will be sketches, snippets of writing, character designs and others… hopefully! I’ll do my best to keep it interesting and will not flood your inbox! At most, you’ll receive an email once a month with a summary of what’s been done.

It won’t always be pretty: there are many elements involved in creating an illustrated book, and more often than not, you need a lot of structure before reaching the final result.

Either way, I hope you find some of it interesting! My inbox is always open for suggestions or complaints. 👂🏻

(Of course, if you prefer to only receive e-mails about other subjects, hit “manage my subscription” at the end of this message and untick “Work in progress”)

Recent watch: O’Dessa

I recently watched a film about a girl who sets up on a journey to save the world from an entertainment machine that consumes people’s dreams, by playing her dad’s old guitar across the country. It’s described as a rock opera, and I found it so different, quirky and interesting. It’s sci-fi. It’s dystopian. It’s steampunk of sorts. It’s been a while since I saw something this original. The visuals are saturated with colour. The story flows in a different way than usual, but I didn’t feel that as a weakness: it made me want to keep watching.

The first IMDB reviews are quite bad, but once I started reading further down, I noticed that the film eventually found its fans.

Maybe it’s not for you if you don’t like musicals and weirdness. But if you do, you might just love it.

That’s a wrap-up!

See you soon!

- Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com, as well as a few other books and art prints.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while I send a summary of what I’ve been up to, so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Dear friends,

It’s been a while since I used this mailing list, but the new chapter has been progressing quickly (finally), and I wanted to send you an interim update.

As a few of you may have read in the previous e-mail, I decided to have a go at modelling the backgrounds for this chapter in 3D. For a few of reasons:

• A bit of added realism and details.

• Saving time (maybe).

• Building up skills to find an art job.

I have already finished a few of the backgrounds, and my approach at the moment is to create them in 3D and then export them as line art, which I will later paint and adjust by hand.

Here’s an example of one of my favourites: the observatory floor (where you can spot one of your cameos: extra cute if I might say so)!

In this image, the characters were drawn by hand, and everything else was created in Blender, as 3D models. It will need a bit of cleanup and a few adjustments to the thickness of some lines, but I’m quite happy with the general result!

And here’s how this looked when initially sketched:

To build the 3D floor, I used a lot of reference images of star observatories from all over the world, so it ended up looking a bit different from my initial idea.

Finally, here are a few unfiltered renders of the 3D model, which look a bit lo-fidelity but you may enjoy seeing a bit of behind-the-scenes!

There are some hints here at the final colour palette, perhaps! 🤓

This is it for now! I’m hoping to hit the April deadline for deliveries. 🤞 Will keep you posted with updates.

Thank you so much again for your support!

- Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there,

Time flies! 🪰 I hope you’re doing well, settling into the first days of Autumn, or Spring, if you happen to be reading this from the other side of the Equator.

From Storyboarding to Comics

I don’t have flashy visuals for you yet, but I’m getting back into the flow of things. The two courses I finished a couple of weeks ago made me rethink the way I compose images, and I’ve been using the new chapter as an excuse to experiment. Below are two pages where I tried different brushes and different levels of detail to work out which one feels more comfortable (and faster!)

I’m trying to worry less about details during the first step of sketching. To not be afraid of making mistakes with anatomy and perspective, and focus on where the characters and elements will be positioned. If I were working for a client, this step wouldn’t be presented to them (unless they specifically asked): it’s just a bunch of lines that make sense to nobody else but me, but it’s a necessary part of the process. I’m a lousy sketcher, eh.

The next pass of pencilling, followed by the line art stage, is where the shapes will be solidified. Eventually, you’ll see some of that too!

This 3-step technique (thumbnail → rough → clean-up) is commonly used in storyboarding, and it makes it easier to focus on different aspects of the scenes one at a time. For example, if I’m thinking about whether my character’s face looks accurate at the same time as I’m thinking about where to position her, it will take me much longer to finish the panel because I’m making multiple decisions at the same time and it’s counter-productive.

Cheating with Blender

Something else I’ve been playing around with is using my 3D model to generate lines that I can incorporate into the drawing, to save some time. When I worked on the last chapter, I drew over the 3D models because I didn’t know it was possible to do this. The technique is commonly used in feature animation films, and maybe in TV too. Yet another tip learned from studying.

Here’s something I’ve been playing around with for one of the spreads:

It’s not quite there yet, and I’m playing with the settings still. I’m considering adding more details to the 3D model, so I don’t have to draw all the windows and street elements. Then I can take pictures of the backgrounds from multiple angles and cut even more drawing time. 😈

Here’s the current status of this image on the actual page, with very rough thumbnails of where the characters are going:

This is it for now in the world of Carol and Art!

See you soon and have a great rest of the weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there,

I hope you’re all doing well!

A couple of weeks ago (or was it just one?) I dropped you a message explaining why the fourth chapter was late. In case you didn’t read it, that’s mostly because I have been studying so that I can find a job as an artist in the animation or games industry, and I put too many things on my plate, as people often do. 🥲

But this Wednesday was the end of both the storyboarding and the background design course, and I’m getting back into working on the chapter. I chose these subjects because they were aspects I needed to improve in my comics, too. Hopefully, that will show, even if only in drawing speed!

While there are no new sketches, I’m leaving you with a playlist preview. It will change a bit yet, but you can see from the get-go that it will be considerably cheesy. 🧀

The order of the songs also says something about the plot itself; I’ll leave you with that thought.

See you soon and have a great weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Dear friends,

I thought I’d give you a quick update, as I missed last week’s! I’ve been studying storyboarding, composition and environment design for animation, so I can find myself a job when the industry gets better. It’s been very fun, and exhausting, but I'm hoping everything I’ve been learning will help me level up the next chapter of the comic, too.

However, the sketching hasn’t progressed much in the last couple of weeks, because I underestimated the amount of course assignments I would have to do. And that my hand would start hurting from drawing so much. I will, however, speed this up and am planning to have chapter four printed by the end of October so I can take it to the Thought Bubble Festival in November.

Also, I’m trying something new this time. As an effort to make the compositions in my panels look more dynamic, I’m first filling them up with boxes that approximate the position of each character. It’s all just boxes right now!

The next update will hopefully bring actual sketches, so stay tuned!

As a bonus, here are composition studies from film or one of my course assignments this week. Can you guess the films?

Looking forward to sharing more news with you. Have an excellent weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi all and Happy Friday!

I’ll spare you the weather talk this week because it’s depressing, and dive right in. 🌧️ I’m starting to draw this book, and I’m getting chills down my spine. It’s the fourth chapter, and we’re past the middle line (it rhymed and it’s okay).

Which brings us to the title of this email: the splendid opening sketch.

I briefly considered leaving it like this instead of drawing. Maybe the new chapter could be a collection of sketchy emojis, and that’s it sorted. It would be fun, but it didn’t happen, so here’s the first sketch of that page, so you can try and guess what’s coming:

I also spent a few hours creating a character design sheet for Carol, so I’d have an example of character development to add to my portfolio.

I used this as an excuse for practising a different technique for shading and doing lines that has slightly more realistic-looking results. I quite like it, but need more practice! I also see more than a few anatomy issues looking at it now, but I’ll do better next time. 😅

I hope you’re all doing well, and wish you an excellent weekend!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there!

I hope you’re all doing well! It looks like sunny days are gone in most of the UK, and we have a rainy summer ahead of us. So hopefully the fictional extra warm London of The Last Day of Rain will give you some solace if live around here. 🥸

The weekly update is turning into a bi-weekly update, by the likes of it, but I’ll get my act together soon. I’ve been building up my online presence to look for freelance work, and it’s been taking a lot of my time, but it has to be done. I have a shiny (cough) new portfolio at claudiamatosa.com now, should you be interested in checking it out.

Buuut there is still time for the comic, and chapter four is progressing! Yesterday evening, I placed the last exclamation mark on the last page of the script, and it’s ready for drawing. As ready as it can be, of course! 😆 I’ll still run a couple of revisions to hone in final details before I put pen to screen.

Writing a script feels more intimate than drawing a comic. Because I’m not worried about the technical aspects of drawing, I think about what’s going on in the minds of my characters a lot more, and the story sometimes takes a few unexpected turns.

Before I leave you, here’s one of those turns:

Because yes, dogs are also characters and their noses are windows to their minds. 😎

I bet you didn’t see that coming.

Have an excellent weekend and see you soon!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there, happy Friday! ☀️

(I probably should find a different way to say hello - the repetition is getting to me. 😆)

Quick update for you this week. After a dip in motivation, the backgrounds are finally progressing. I’ve been working on a train station scene and it’s been fun carving a coloured, detailed version out of loose sketches.

What you see here isn’t the final page yet, but it’s getting there! The current colouring is called “flatting”, before shading and final effects are applied. And don’t fear: the characters will also be coloured! 😎

Here’s the next page, where you see a pod car park in the background. I saw chargers with solar panel roofs in a motorway station and thought something like that would look interesting in Shiba Town.

I’ve been watching Avatar lately and wishing my backgrounds were more painterly. Might do away with lines altogether in the next volume, if it still fits the style, but we’ll see. 👀

This is it for this week. Slow but steady. Looking forward to showing you more next Friday!

Finally, if you are subscribed to my main newsletter and didn’t receive anything last week, it’s because I didn’t send it. I failed my promise! But I hope to eventually restart regular posting there, once both books are finished. 🥵

See you soon!

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

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• Bluesky

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• LinkedIn

Hi there!

Hope you’re doing well! I’m running out of weather talk after many weeks of nonsense, so I’ll crack on with the update. 😁

Progress

This week, I didn’t do much. I decided to take a break, as the line art for the characters was a bit tiring, and I’m just beginning to work on the backgrounds. I’m painting them as I’m drawing them, so I’ll have at least a complete page to show you in the next update. More than that, hopefully!

For the last three weeks, I’ve been drawing on my old, slow iPad while travelling with my partner and a friend. I’m looking forward to working on my large screen again, now that we’re going home. 📺

Carol’s Family Background

A few months ago, a friend asked me a question over lunch: “What’s Carol’s ethnicity? I’m curious, but I can’t tell by looking at her.” I answered him with a vague “Exactly! She’s a Londoner. That’s the effect I’m going for.”

But this reply feels a bit lazy to me. I know exactly what her origins are, but I didn’t go through the trouble of writing it down properly. So let’s do that here!

When I first thought of her, I knew her family background would be important: it would affect parts of her personality, and of the story. People don’t exist in a vacuum, and we all carry influences and trauma from previous generations.

I wanted her to look like a Londoner. Because she was born in London, and her genes are the result of many cultures and ethnicities coming across each other throughout the years. That’s why it’s difficult to pinpoint her origins. If I had made her similar to what people outside the UK imagine Londoners to be, then perhaps she’d be closer to this instead:

But I think that wouldn’t be faithful to the world of my story, and I wanted to pay tribute to the multitude of people I see walking the streets of London. She’s the result of many generations of immigrants who worked hard to create a good life for their children.

Here’s a breakdown of her family history quickly put together:

This said, I imagine her family sort of descending from my own, so I don’t think we are different at all. We’re both Londoners, just living in different times, and we share a megacity brimming with its very own culture.

After all, if we go back far enough, each of us is a bundle of mixed genes and influences, and that’s part of what makes humans fascinating.

See you soon, and thank you so much for reading!

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there, and happy Friday! What have you been up to this week?

I’ve been inking more pages, so I don’t have a lot to show that doesn’t look very similar to what you have seen before. So instead, I’ll show you how I’m using a 3D map to help draw the scenes that happen in Shiba Town.

In case you missed this in the description of the Kickstarter page, Shiba Town is an underground neighbourhood excavated in South London, where Surrey Quays and Canada Water used to be. Most Londoners moved there when the rain stopped falling, except for those who couldn’t afford it. It’s the new city centre!

In order to visualise how the underground neighbourhood would look like, I created a 2D map and a 3D model of the city. The map looks very rough around the edges, because I’m using it only as a guide, but I promised you behind-the-scenes content, so here it is!

The yellow bit is above ground, and it’s where Carol, Art and Pepper live with their pets.

I then placed the map in Blender and began creating the city.

And finally added the three areas and some buildings. The buildings outside Shiba Town are imported from Google Maps, so I didn’t need to model them myself!

And it’s an underground city, so it features a roof made of solar panels on top:

I didn’t add details to all the buildings, as the model is mostly there to help me place the characters as the story unfolds.

Here’s an example of how I used it to speed up the sketching process, and so the city looks more consistent throughout:

I used a similar process in the cover. Here’s the final image:

And the 3D render underneath, which is a zoomed in view of the map you saw above:

It’s the first book where I’m using 3D extensively and I’m hoping that it will make things look better in the end. But I’ll be waiting for you to tell me if that’s the case, when you receive the comics! 😁

And this is it for today! I hope you have an excellent weekend and looking forward to catching up again next Friday. ✨

Claudia

Thank you for reading! The four chapters of The Last Day of Rain are available in my online store at shop.claudiamatosa.com.

You’re also very welcome to subscribe to this blog if you like reading my ramblings (for some reason)! I don’t e-mail every post, but once in a while, I send a summary of what I’ve been up to so you can catch up:

Subscribe now

For bits and pieces, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• LinkedIn

Hi there, and Happy Friday! ☀️

This week, I have been focusing on inking the chapter. This is the part of the process that takes the longest, as the lines will be the final ones that make it to the comic. They also need to be made in a way that speeds up the colouring stage.

Since working on the previous chapter, I have studied the process that animators follow and am applying some of their ideas to speed up my workflow. I’m doing all the characters first and the backgrounds at the end since those can sometimes be repeated throughout multiple panels. It’s all about efficiency; no need to draw the exact same thing over and over again!

Here’s my favourite panel so far, where Carol tries to work out how to fix an implant. When you draw your characters a hundred times, you start to develop love-hate feelings towards them, so the best remedy for me is to make them engage in funny poses.

And yes, she’s not holding that tool properly because she’s so focused on the screen that she can’t see what she’s doing.

Here’s a sneak peek at the full page, before adding backgrounds, colours and text:

This is the scene where Carol and Art meet for the first time!

Next week, I’ll give you an insider look at the map of Shiba Town, the 3D model that I created to visualise the different neighbourhoods, and hopefully a few more previews. :D

All the best and see you soon,
- Claudia

Hi there, and happy Friday!

The third chapter is progressing: the rough pencil art is done, and I’m moving on to inking, which means I’ll draw the outlines and add extra details before popping in the colours. The cameos are also in place, but I’ll leave those for a future update when they are more detailed. 🥸

While the campaign was running, and based on feedback collected from multiple sources over the last year, I reviewed the plot and made changes to the ending. This included removing an important character from a central role. Even though it was emotionally complicated for me, the story as a whole feels solid now. It is more straightforward but stronger and aligned with Carol and Art’s lives and personalities. And I want to tell you, but I don’t want to spoil it!

There are things that you only see when you’re in the thick of it. And I realised how badly afflicted by grief Carol is, how grumpy and sad that makes her, and how it affects the way she moves about and interacts with other people. I want to hug her and tell her that it will be okay, but I don’t think she has enough self-awareness to see that she’s not fine, so she’d probably rebuff me.

This chapter needed a few extra pages to accommodate the new ending of the story. I didn’t want to compromise on quality, so it came out slightly longer than I expected: 48 pages in total, including the cover. I’m hoping to meet the deadline still, but I will keep you updated in case it overruns. Either way, if all goes well, it won’t be more than a couple of weeks!

In the meantime, here’s what my books look like in the early stages. Consider this perhaps a weird-looking teaser! There’s a watermark hiding some scenes because I don’t want to reveal them just yet. 🐶

Thank you for reading, and hope to see you next week. ❤️

- Claudia

Little did I know when I launched my Kickstarter campaign that it would take this long to get through it. It was an emotional journey.

Amidst the AI chaos, I began wondering if anyone would care about a comic book series drawn by hand. I still don’t know. Only time will tell.

What I do know is that I learned a lot and that, for me, it was worth it.

The full moon competes with a glittery web of city lights, contrasting brightly against the purple sky.

“I love you,” you whisper through closed eyes, allowing the words to dissolve gently in the breeze for a few seconds. Then you pull her in closer and eagerly dig your fingers in the blue locks of her unruly hair. She kisses your neck and leans her head on your shoulder, and the world stops for a few seconds.

In the distance, far from the terrace where you stand, you can hear the hum of trains sweeping past at one thousand miles per hour. And a few levels below, on the street, excited crowds come in and out of bars mouthing strident tunes. Office workers are celebrating another week's end, probably preparing their voices for the karaoke booths.

But you barely register the noise. Your ears are muted from the shock of the conversation that you just had.

Danielle’s tears roll down your shirt, one after the other. They feel warm against your chest. A heavy mixture of lavender and sweat floats in the air. Slowly, first with one hand, then both, she unlaces the hug and pushes you away. You reach out and brush the tips of her fingers, but she’s already turning around to leave. You take a step forward.

“Why?”

Your hand is lost mid-air between you and her.

“Please, Joel.”

You walk her across the roof towards a metallic door and then stop as she opens it. You want to follow, but you don’t. So you watch as she descends the swirly staircase. Down and down, out of your life. A creaking sound every couple of seconds; it grows fainter and fainter, then becomes an echo, then nothing.

You close the door with a listless movement, walk back to the roof's edge and glance down at the entrance of the building. She comes out, climbs on a rental bicycle and joins the tangle of two-wheeler vehicles speeding past rush hour.

The road is barely visible due to the augmented-reality advertisements streaming from the shops. To the left, a pair of pint glasses with feet and blushed cheeks sing and dance, then trip on each other, get up again, and then resume dancing to the sound of a cheesy country song. You let out a prolonged sigh and finally leave the building.

“But why,” you whisper to yourself.

In your head, you replay the night when she first took you to that same roof.

It was chillier than usual, even for the last half of Dhanus. You sat on the cold concrete floor and wrapped your arm around her shoulders. She took a wool blanket out of her bag and placed it over your legs. You snuggled up as close to her as it was physically possible.

There was a bottle of red wine. She filled your glasses to half and took a quick sip from hers. But you didn’t feel like drinking; the excitement of her presence was already making you dizzy.

“That’s Pisces. It means fish,” she said, pointing at a corner of the night sky. “Sorry, I’m sure you know what it means!” She apologised, covering her mouth.

“I didn’t, but I do now,” you replied with a wink, even though you did know. Your family spoke Catalan at home, and the word was very similar. To this day, you still don’t understand why you lied to her. “Why is it a fish, in any case? I can’t see the similarities.”

“The tail is on top as if it’s splashing around, and the head faces right. You see? It’s my favourite constellation. It reminds me of the sea.”

You shrugged. “It looks like the face of a chicken pecking at corn to me.”

Even though she winced in disapproval, a half smile sprouted in her mouth. You lifted your finger to join hers, pointing towards the stars.

“It’s looking left, you see? The beak is where the tail of your fish folds.”

“And when was the last time you’ve seen a chicken,” she asked, snugging herself further into the curve of your arm. “You’re right, though; it looks like one. Kind of.”

She stopped for a few seconds, then turned her eyes to you and released a long breath.

“I wish I could go there one day. If any planets are orbiting those stars, I mean.”

Thank you for reading! Should you be interested, the full story is available for order:

Order Phobos

And if you enjoyed the artwork, there is also a collection of prints and bookmarks available:

Order prints and bookmarks

See you soon!

– Claudia

For more frequent, bite-sized updates, you can find me on the following socials:

• Instagram (the one I update regularly)

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• Threads

• LinkedIn

I hope you all had an excellent New Year’s Eve! If you dozed off at nine in the evening eating leftover Christmas chocolates under a blanket, that sounds excellent.

It’s been a while since I last wrote a newsletter, and I’ve been debating if I should write a year-in-review recap or leave it be. The internet is full of success stories of people who quit their jobs and made a living within a year, or at least had prospects of doing so. That’s not my case at all, and I feel embarrassed. But still, not everything was bad: many good things happened, and they are worthy of acknowledgement. I tend to overlook any success I happen to chance upon, so maybe writing about them will be good.

In December 2023, I left my job to try and make a living creating comic books. My fellow creators will laugh at this, albeit sadly, because they would know what ensued even if I didn’t tell them. The answer is simple: at that objective, in particular, I failed miserably. Most of us do, except for the most resilient (which I’m not). But in the process, I learned that there are art careers that I can try out and that I can use what I learn to continue creating comics. And I will spend 2025 pursuing these careers, even if that means getting a full-time job coding again while I wait for things to work out.

After saying this, I’m not completely sure if failure is the right word. I did fail at making enough money to cover my living expenses, but I learned a lot:

• Ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in early 2024, consisting of two books. The first one has been delivered, and I’m working on the second, which will be fulfilled in the first months of 2025. It was delayed quite a bit, and that’s another reason for me feeling like I failed, but the fact that my backers understand the reasons and are still waiting keeps me going.

• Learned how to sell my work at conventions in an empathetic way, and have been connecting with my audience much better since then. I’m looking forward to continuing in 2025 and seeing where things go.

• Redid my website and put a freelancing portfolio together, which was a massive effort. After a number of rejections that no human being should have to withstand, I learned that what I did was too generic and that I needed to make it better. I had to spend some time studying.

• As I couldn’t afford university, I built my own curriculum with mentored online courses in the second part of 2024. I learned a lot about art for animation, film and games and how to create a portfolio. I am now in between a few career choices and have to decide, which will be difficult, but I’m a tiny bit hopeful.

• Had the chance to give a small talk about my work to my former teacher’s current students, which was a lovely experience. Thank you so very much, Sarah, for giving me the opportunity.

• The Last Day of Rain is in a physical shop, in Harrogate: Destination Venus! They are also in the same building as a branch of Everyman Cinema, which is my favourite cinema, so I’m very happy.

• Redid my online shop, and I think it looks a little better now, and it’s easier to use. A massive factor of disappointment here is that I didn’t manage to make a single sale to a stranger online, even though I put some ads up on a few platforms. My guess is that what I sell isn’t interesting for the internet, and I need to learn how to make work that rises above an online world full of bots and AI. I have to admit I’m not sure if I’m quite up for this challenge and I’m not sure if I want it, but we’ll see.

• Finally found the courage to gather reviews from customers and friends, which you can also find in the shop.

• Put up an Amazon author profile, which you can follow should you want to hear about any new books I release.

• Received a lot of compliments on my work, both at events and online. I’m not good at taking a compliment, and I always put myself down, so perhaps this is a sign to do that less.

• Towards the end of the year, I overcame depression and started feeling a little more like myself again. And this, for me, was the biggest achievement of all.

In retrospect, I learned a lot about what to do and not to do in business. That didn’t leave me enough time to create as much work as I would have liked to, so I need to find a balance in 2025. The year is already shaping up and keeping me busy, and I’m looking forward to sharing what’s in store with you in future emails.

I keep saying I’m doing many things very quickly because I don’t want to spend ten years trying to “make it”. But I’m certain I’ll still spend more than ten years trying, and it can last forever if I don’t define what “to make it” means.

This year, I’ll aim to be more gentle with myself and celebrate achievements more than failures.

But now, it's time to log off and get to work. There will be a lot of it!

Wishing you an excellent 2025, with good tidings and the strength to tackle all the challenges life sends towards you. We can do this! 💪

– Claudia

Should you be interested in ordering my books or some wall art, you can do so here: https://claudiamatosa.com/shop

And for more frequent updates, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram (the one I update regularly)

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• Threads

• LinkedIn

If you’re new to Comics, Stories & Things, welcome. Thank you so much for subscribing. ❤️

I’m writing to you from my hometown in Portugal today, where the weather is as mildly disappointing as back in the UK. And I have to say that I’m taking a small satisfaction in that fact. Portugal ain’t having it better than us. No sir! But now, seriously, it would be nice to see some sun, please. 🌞

Today, there’s news to share! Chapter three of The Last Day of Rain is out, and you can order the digital and paperback versions from my shop.

In this issue, besides speaking a bit more about the comic, I’m sharing a few personal notes on doing the things that inspire you despite being afraid of failure. You can also read a review of “What Happened On Thursday”, by Weird is The Best, a collection of beautifully done daily comics about life and cats. Finally, I recommend a science-fiction anthology on Kickstarter, created by Nick Bryan, which I think you will love.

LET’S GO!

Kickstarter Spotlight: The Collected Letters of Courier-Z

Do you like science fiction and wonder what the life of Amazon and Evri drivers is like? This anthology of short stories, written by Nick Bryan and illustrated by a group of talented artists, is funding on Kickstarter at the moment. It features a cat that, according to the reviews, isn’t all that different from Mr Clippy, which is guaranteed to please millennials all over:

But Nick is much better at explaining his own work, for obvious reasons:

This is it for today! Thank you for staying with me, and see you soon!

Should you be interested in ordering my books, you can do so here: https://claudiamatosa.com/shop

And for more frequent updates, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram (the one I update regularly)

• Ex-Twitter

• LinkedIn

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• Threads

Carol lives in a cloudless London, where the last days of rain are long gone. In pursuit of the dream of seeing rain again, she follows a data theft suspect, and rejected lover, towards a rich underground neighbourhood she despises. In the process, she will have to face a family past she would rather have forgotten forever.

Order online

But what’s it really about?

“Yeah, yeah, it looks like a mildly interesting story with some drawings that are a little too colourful, perhaps. If I were to get it, what’s in it for me?”

That Last Day of Rain happens in 2091. It features a shy artist-engineer in love with the tools of his trade:

There’s an underground city, built south of the river Thames, where Surrey Quays used to be:

A main character who won’t take being broken up with over holographic letters as an answer:

And thoughts about segregation in a world where we should be tackling problems together:

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, chapter three is available today, having been funded last February by a crowd of AWESOME Kickstarter backers.

You can order it in digital or physical format from my online shop, and it’s also available via the Comix App, GlobalComix, and the ComicScene Plus library.

Order "The Last Day of Rain"

In case you’re not familiar with the series, there is a catch-up bundle:

Order catch-up bundle

Buuut this isn’t the end: there are two more volumes to go until the story ends. Feel free to follow this space should you wish to be the first to hear about them:

Subscribe now

Thank you for reading, and hope to see you soon!

Thank you for reading!

Should you be interested in checking out my work, you can do so here: https://claudiamatosa.com/shop

And for more frequent updates, you can also find me on the following socials:

• Instagram (the one I update regularly)

• Ex-Twitter

• LinkedIn

• Bluesky

• Mastodon

• Threads

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