At the age of 10, I would go with my father to drawing competitions at the Santiago Zoo, in Chile, a very particular place located on a hill in the heart of the capital. That marked my life, although it would be a long time before I began drawing illustrations. In my teens I entered a photography workshop at school and fell in love with lights and shadows, but I also saw the opportunity to complement my passions without even having any idea what the future would hold for me.
After studying advertising, I worked in agencies, something that was comfortable for me, with languages that I knew and challenging quite often to me, almost perfect … just almost, because the life of the publicist does not give time to rest or enjoy. That machinery caught me absolutely, until the point that one day I decided to travel through Europe for three months without clear destinations.
On my return I resigned and started independently. At first it was not easy, more than once I had to give up my ideas, but a magical moment occurred, I had always used Photoshop to retouch photos, but one very particular day that I remember perfectly, almost 15 years ago, I decided to use the application brush on an empty digital canvas, after a while an amphibian was produced and later a lovely bird. I did not expect the results that came out and eager to use them I focused on finding what to do with them. That day everything changed. It was a day that changed my life.
Printed in hand, I went to the place where they would appreciate the potential of that work. At the door of the National Secretary of the Environment, I ran into a well-known biologist in the country who later became a recurring partner with his projects. In his office I was able to see the first draft of “Mammals of Chile”, the largest book he would work on to date. The project was slow and at times very complex, it was necessary to find an attractive design so that the nearly 300 pages were not boring and at the same time, made it easier to read.
Then more challenges would come, getting photos of a certain level, which in those years was a daunting task, since technology was not overcrowded as today, and only a few photographers had quality images. I remember many photos of rodents taken by the tail to prevent their escape while they were photographed and many others inside cages, resources widely used among biologist but also not very aesthetic. Photoshop was very helpful in disguising those shortcomings and allowed me to play visual games that improved the book design.
Finally, the biggest task, illustrating species that had vague records or simply no references. I remember as if it were yesterday a couple of complex cases. Using “google” of those early years and finding an image of Chinchillula sahamae I got a pretty small image, therefore without details, of an animal that I assumed dead and placed on purpose on a rock to give the impression of a living creature. With that image I interpreted something similar to a long-tailed guinea pig that is in the rodent section and that for years was the reference for those who wanted to know it (you can see the differences in the drawings attached below). Another example of a problem to deal with was a rodent that I drew based on comments from the biologist. After many years I saw this rodent again and I seriously doubt that there is an animal on this planet resembling what I drew.
The book has been a success and became a vital work of this type of literature in the country, which led to a small guide on the same subject. I already handled an old Wacom tablet well that facilitated the illustration of countless cetaceans that had to be included. I never had classes on illustrations and drawing – everything flowed instinctively.
Since I also have a type of color blindness that complicates my life , I had only ventured to draw without painting. With that problem Photoshop opened the possibility for me through a tool to investigate each pixel and determine the color I needed, which on paper was impossible. That way I technically solved a big problem for me. To be honest I still require the opinions of my daughters and wife in some extreme cases, as I once painted a cat’s tail with some green.
The books began to follow one another, then “Carnívoros de Chile” and several volumes for many species with conservation problems were published. My mission there was to design and provide some illustrations, along with a large number of high-level Chilean illustrators participated in this project.
I learned from this collaborative project, but also I made important conclusions. I always loved the watercolor or pencil drawings that I saw in the rest, but once I was forced to incorporate them I could appreciate the problems that these types of techniques offer in publications, and the amount of extra work they generate. Well, a traditional drawing requires to be digitized and then cleaning and retouching to erase the imperfections and the background that can cause so many complications, because both the textures of the papers and their tones directly affect the result of the design.
With that experience I decided to try the new Cintiq, a very promising product of Wacom that eliminated the strange unnatural e !ort of looking and drawing on two different perspectives. Anyone who has not used a digitizing tablet will hardly be able to understand that one needs to be certain of where the line of an illustration is. The beginning was quite encouraging, but the feeling grew that the technology still had mistakes that did not give me the fluidity that I was looking for, if to that you added the limitation produced by connecting three cables in parallel, I began to question the full potential of the tool.
One day, what I consider to be an important milestone for me took place, when a group of biologists invited me to a very interesting project on conservation in a distant archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Among the Juan Fernández Islands, there is a small island known as Robinson Crusoe, where Alexander Selkirk was abandoned by his ship, inspiring the famous novel. The photographic work was amazing for me. I would visit a place known by few people, where I developed my passion for photography. What followed was the factor of changing my illustrations… my entire working life has been at the hands of Apple, from my first and beloved Apple SE computer to the iMac where I write today.
The project team gave me an iPad pro, a tablet that I had seen from a distance because it did not convince me at all. Researching its use, I was able to find an application that initially seemed useful to me and that I have never stopped using, Procreate. Upon arrival from the expedition, I developed a beautiful animation as a product of the trip and millions of ideas exploded in my head. One of them was to take advantage of the iPad. Well, I could see the potential of this tool, which coincided with one of the most beautiful books I have been able to work on, “The Birds of Prey of Chile,” a luxury book, by format and photos, printed in hexachromia ( 6/6 colors instead of the traditional 4/4 colurs) which enhanced the pics that were inside and that I illustrated like never before.
The requirement of one of the authors forced me to polish my technique over and over again, and to me, it was the beginning of my consolidation as a naturalistic illustrator, without technique and color blind, but with a deep love for what I do, and wanting not to stop until this planet is a little better than when I was born.
