Three Amigos

Three Amigos - click to enlarge

Three Amigos – Pen and ink

My good friends Gustavo Cimadoro (cima-cima doro), Christian Erriquez and Fernando Falcone.
This was done in between classes at the P.Pueyrredon Art School about 10 years ago.
I haven’t seen them ever since but I got in touch with Gustavo a couple of months ago when I started this blog.

Caricatures are my passion. I’ve been making caricatures since I can remember. I made a lot of enemies. Some guys just torn the drawings apart.
I guess everyone is too worried about how they look, so when I show them how I see them they don’t like it.

I studied comics and cartoons when I was a teenager at the EAH (Escuela Argentina de Historietas) back in 1989.
The teachers at the EAH were some of the most famous comic book illustrators and writers.
Most of them were regulars on the “Fierro” magazine and “Humor” magazine.
One of them was Ricardo Barreiro, who one time gave the class a fragment of one of his scripts to illustrate as an assignment.
I also had classes with Miguel Rep and Sanyu.
Many of the argentinean Comic artists from the 70’s and 80’s had big success and made their careers in Europe, mainly Spain.
Publications like Metal Hurlant (France and Spain), Cimoc (Spain), Zona 84 (Spain), Heavy Metal (USA) and many more had by this time more than 50% of their material from Argentinean hands.

Juan Jimenez, Ricardo Barreiro, Francisco Solano Lopez, Horacio Altuna, Carlos Trillo, José Antonio Muñoz, Carlos Sampayo, Alberto Dose (friend of mine) and many others had a successful career in Europe. It’s important to mention that some of these artists had to escape Argentina from the 1976 to 1983 Argentinean Military Dictartorship who kidnapped, tortured and killed Hector Oesterheld (and his daughters and an estimated 30,000 people), author of “El Eternauta” one of the best comic books of all times.

The Accountant

The accountant - click to enlarge

The accountant

Pencil on paper.

The Poet

The Poet - click to enlarge

The Poet

Pencil on paper.

Curiosity

Curiosity - click to enlarge

Curiosity

Just a sketch.
Pen & Ink on paper.

The Writer

: The Writer – click to enlarge

The Writer – Pencil on paper.
This is another unplanned drawing, nobody in particular, just came out like that.
When I draw a face I’m always asked: who is that?
- Nobody you know…

The Salesman

The Salesman - click image to enlarge

Pencil on paper. Not much to say. I guess this one is from a series of imaginary portraits that I ‘ve been working on these last couple of years.
On these type of work, there’s no plan. Just start drawing and see what comes out.

Model Study 1

Model Study 1 - click image to enlarge

This is a drawing I made when I was at the National School of Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina somewhere around 1997.
Charcoal on paper. I don’t know the name of the model. I didn’t knew back then either.
It was photographed before the digital-camera era, so the quality is not that good.
Also, it was on a very large paper size, so it bent a little.

Suffer the Children

Suffer the Children - click to enlarge

Ever since I became a father I feel different. Things that didn’t use to bother me before now hit me hard.
I am more sensitive to subjects involving children suffering. In movies, music, stories I read in the news, I find myself holding my tears.
When I work, draw or paint, I usually listen to music. It motivates me. (more…)

Is this Art?

A long time ago I was at work and I had a book on abstract painting. As a friend and I were scanning the pages our boss showed up. He looked at the book and smiled and started explaining us what was art and what wasn’t. Of course that was not the first time I heard somebody say that art is only figurative and or elaborated and not something that “my kid can do”.
Nonetheless I wanted to hear what he had to say. In the middle of his ramblings he grabbed a piece of paper from the desk and drew a black “X” with his pen. “If that’s art…” -he said – “then this is art too…”. My friend, who by the way is a painter and was going through his abstract phase started arguing with him and I don’t remember how it ended. Plus I had to get back to work.

Another day, I was reading a book about Van Gogh’s self portraits. This guy came and started flipping through the pages as if it were “People’s magazine”.
I thought I knew what was coming next…but he really surprised me. He said and I quote “-esto para mi es un tipo con barba…” which means something like “this is just a guy with a beard…”. He was talking about Vincent Van Gogh self portraits. He really cracked me up. That phrase stuck up in my head forever. I still use it in certain situations as a funny remark.
By the way, on Wikipedia’s page on art there’s a Van Gogh self portrait. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

This is what his drawing looked like

The point of this story is that everyone, artist or not, has an opinion on what is art.
I would like to hear yours:

Loading ...

You are most welcome to vote and comment.

Nico.

Regadera (water pot)

Regadera (water pot) - click image to enlarge

This is Horacio.
He was one of the security guards when I used to work for ESPN Sur, the South American branch of ESPN about 10 years ago.
The guys used to call him “Regadera” which means “water pot” because he would miss the toilet seat every time.