Hi Santiago,
It's great that you are putting together a library for your school.
As a boy I loved to read all kinds of books. When I was twelve I read in a comic book about a place called The Famous Artists' School. I wrote to them and they gave me a test that would measure how good I was at drawing. Then they sent a cartoonist to my house who said I had artistic talent but I was too young to go to the school. It was in tenth grade that I got my first real training in art, photography and advertising. Many years later I am a busy illustrator and work with watercolors and colored pencils - brand name, Prismacolor. The paper is Arches or Fabriano watercolor paper. I also teach one night a week at the School of Visual Arts.
I spent part of my childhood in Puerto Rico, then moved to Fort Lauderdale and now I live in New York with my family. My childhood asthma did in fact influence my art life. Because I spent so many hours bedridden, I drew constantly and read constantly which helped me develop my style as well as a way of thinking to work out original ideas. As a child I had chronic asthma and would frequently be so ill that I could not leave the house for days or even weeks at a time. But all those times I spent locked up inside, I spent filling up dozens of composition notebooks with all kinds of drawings. I even tried to write my own comic books…. So my illness as a child, which kept me from going outside to play, became a blessing. Ideas are very important for anyone who tries to create art. More so than being able to draw or paint well.
I hope this helped answer some of your questions. Keep asking. Curiosity is good for the brain.
Please keep in touch. Best, Raul
Raul,
I wanted to show everyone a book you made called Doña Flor: A Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart that is one of my favorites. Pat Mora who wrote the book gave it to me and your illustrations and the story was so fantastic that it won the Pura Belpré in 2009. She is a giant woman who lives in a little town with lots of other families. Children use her flowers for trumpets and her leftover tortillas for a raft.
Just this year I started to practice drawing with colored pencils and I like the way they feel in my hand. They come in so many amazing colors and you can blend them together to make new ones. I like the way you made those rainbow borders around all the artwork and when you look at your drawings close up I see that you scratch beautiful textures into them. I like talking to my dad and mom about art and you said something incredible, that ideas are more important than being able to draw or paint well. It makes me think about where ideas come from. Like your asthma my friends and I have things that hold us back but you are right that sometimes those problems can help us grow even stronger. We think you had so much fun playing with how big and how small things are in this book. Like the picture of Doña Flor holding that tiny little book or the tortilla. I have never seen anyone use colored pencils like you and your pictures have big magic in them.
I was imagining that there was a tortilla big enough to be a boat and my friends Charlotte, Pierre, Tanner and Inika were riding with me down a river. I wanted to be the boy with the straw hat.
See the September 2010 issue of Artist's Magazine to learn more about how Raul Colón works and visit his website at: www.raulcolon.com
No comments:
Post a Comment