Building Manolo

It’s true. From animation to drama, we love TV. Whether it’s on Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, or AppleTV, If a show makes us smile, laugh, or think, it’ll usually end up on a lunch bag.

In February 2021, we watched The Book of Life and loved it. It was entertaining, colorful and told a thoughtful story of Manolo: a boy torn between his dream to be a musician and the expectations of his family. Receiving a round of thumbs up from the family, it was a no-brainer that Manolo needed to be memorialized on a lunch bag.

When I share the bags, I generally get asked three questions: How long does it take? Where do you get your ideas from? What do you use to draw them? The real answer, it depends.

I’ll answer those questions in greater depth in a future post, but here I thought I would share how I typically draw a lunch bag - from a sketch to a final photo in the end.

Below are a series of photos I took building Manolo. From the initial pencil sketch that I traced with a pen, to the final layers of color pencil, I tend to build each image one piece at a time. In this case, I wanted to share a motionless Manolo caught between the pull of his dreams and his family at home.