“Bandoleros” by Koldo Barroso

“Bandoleros” is the title of my latest illustration, a pencil drawing that has been finished digitally with ink effects. This work has been inspired by the mountains where I live now, in a small village in the North of Madrid called Soto del Real. Naomi and I spend every weekend walking and hiking in the mountains and woods and sometimes we go to this area in the rocky mountains called La Pedriza. This is a very popular place where lots of people go from all over the country for hiking.

The reason why I picked the rocky mountains of La Pedriza is because of the local legends surrounding the place. These mountains were inhabited by famous bandits -bandoleros- in the 18th century who would escape from Madrid when in danger and have their hidden dens amongst the rocks. There are many the stories related to the bandits who lived in these mountains in those days. The most well-known ones were related to Luis Candelas, a famous bandit who ended his days in 1834 executed in the “garrote vil” -an Spanish invention to kill people-. The character of Luis Candelas is one of the most interesting ones I’ve read about because, apart from being a famous bandit, he managed to deal with people from the aristocracy in Madrid and he even had an affair with one of the lovers of the king Fernando VII and -just like the Mexican character El Zorro or Robin Hood- became a local hero.

Other popular bandits who lived in these mountains were Paco “El Sastre” and Mariano Balseiro. In the 70’s, a very popular Spanish TV show about bandits called “Curro Jimenez” was shot in La Pedriza. For a while, some friends of mine used to find wasted rolls of film from the movie in the mountains. Not a very clean thing to do from the production company!

This illustration is not related any specific character or event related to the bandits in La Pedriza. I have just put a lot of stories together and gotten my own profile of the bandits, putting up a scene where they are looking from the mountains for guards coming from Madrid. In the picture you can actually see Madrid in the background, as it would appear around 1840. Today this view is very different and what you can see is the three sky scrapers that have been built in these last few years.

During the process of doing this drawing, I’ve been scanning the different stages, each one related to the use of different pencils starting with B-8 for the lines and darker shades and ending up with HB pencil for the lighter parts. As I said before, I covered some background spots, including the sky, with digital ink painting to reinforce the contrast between the different parts of the illustration.

Making of “Bandoleros”

This drawing is part of a new series of illustration that I’m doing based in pencil drawing, trying to consolidate an alternative to the painting illustrations, which usually take so much longer to be finished. I am already working in a new one featuring a witch. Let´s see what comes of it…

“The Blue Cow’s Nightmare” by Koldo Barroso

Have you ever wondered what cows dream about? This is the way I portrayed the nightmare of a stuffed cow. A scene that has to do with global warming and the terrible consequences of men’s abuse of nature. I know it may look weird at first sight but I will try to explain how all this developed.

I originally drew this illustration back in 1991, though I never really finished it. I recently recovered it from an old folder and decided it was time to get it finished and shown, so I completed the drawing and did a few corrections on the computer. The original pencil drawing is 35 x 32 cm. It will be featured in my book in project “Portraits From The Dreamlands”.

The story of this piece stars in September 1989, during my first trip to United Kingdom. I was spending a few days in Brighton and my partner at the time and I decided to have a walk along the beach in the night. We were walking by the infamous Brighton Pier and we saw one of these machines with paws to catch stuffed animals. I never gamble or play these things, I think is a stupid way to waste your money. But this time, I saw the cutest stuffed animal ever amongst a mountain of bears. It was a little blue cow and she was looking at me with innocent eyes telling me: “Take me home”.

Detail of the Little Blue Cow

So I had to save her from jail and take her with me. I started spending one coin after the other and trying to grab her with these mechanical paws that never seem to catch a damn thing. After three tries, she was released! It was a very exciting moment. But it didn’t end so easily. Just after taking the Little Blue Cow out of the cage we found out there was also a brown bull, it was her boyfriend and she beg me to free him too. It broke my heart, so I couldn’t just go like that and we ended up spending 10 pounds on two little stuffed animals!

I liked so much the design of Little Blue Cow that I decided to do this illustration about her. After all it’s not the first time that a stuffed animal becomes protagonist of a story, let’s not forget that A. A. Milne wrote Winnie the Pooh stories after his son’s teddy bear. I wondered what this Little Blue Cow would dream of and I thought she would have nightmares about how men abuse nature. So I came up with this idea of the big cloud of smoke swallowing the sun.

Detail of the smoke

For the character of the smoke cloud, I got inspired by Goya’s painting “Saturn Devouring One of His Sons”. I saw this painting hanging on the wall at my godfather’s place when I was four and I got completely impressed by it. There’s an older version of this scene painted by Rubens in 1636 which supposedly inspired Goya for his.

The landscape was inspired by my family’s homeland, Orduña, in the Basque Country. I used a few sketches of the mountains that I had drawn there many years before. The house is a typical building from the area called “caserio”. My grandparents and ancestors used to live in a place like this. Cows, hills and “caserios” are some of the most popular elements in Basque culture. If you want to know more about it I suggest you to watch a Spanish movie directed by Julio Médem in 1992 called “Vacas” (Cows).

Detail of the “caserio”

When I look at this illustration it makes me think about for how long we’ve known about the terrible consequences of man’s abuse of the Earth. I remember talking about this subject with friends in the early 80’s after Peter Gabriel’s song “Here Comes the Flood” and it looked like science fiction but these catastrophes are happening today. I also wrote a song called “1000 Seasons Haiku” by 1996, along with my good friend Juan Carlos Samper, which talked about seeing images of earthquakes, floods, fires and droughts all over the world in the news. It is very sad to check how this is exactly what is going on today and stuffed blue cows must probably have the same kind of nightmares. I dream of the day their nightmares turn into beautiful dreams.

“The Mesmerizer” by Koldo Barroso

This is my latest illustration, called “The Mesmerizer”. I’ve been working in this piece for the last two weeks and it will be featured in my new portfolio with a couple of new works that I’m currently working on.

The Mesmerizer has been inspired by different characters related to the world of mediums, mentalists and hypnotizers. I guess he could be a cross between Derren Brown and Max von Sydow in Bergman’s The Magician. I had this Gothic scene on my mind with this cold and unexpressive character that could look inside your soul and mesmerize you to control your will. Possibly it stayed in the back of my mind for a long time, since I read E.T.A. Hoffman’s short story “Der Magnetiseur”, many years ago.

In a forthcoming post I will talk more about images that influenced me to do this work and a little bit about it’s process and the changes it went through before becoming what you can see now.

This illustration will be featured in my book in project “Portraits From The Dreamlands”.

Here is a new illustration that I’ve just finished for one of the projects I’ve been working in lately: a children’s book about monsters at home and how to not fear them. The working title is “Boos And Creaks” and it compiles a collection of illustrations and text about those annoying monsters that every kid fears and show up at any corner of the house. Every monster is being categorized and filed and I am also writing some suggestions and advices about how to deal with them and to not be scared about them anymore.

This particular creature is called “Amgonnaitya”: a monster that grows in fridges and pretends to swallow us whenever we open the door for food or for a drink. He is pretty pathetic because he doesn’t know there’s another silly monster living inside his mouth. I won’t tell much more about this so I don’t unveil the whole story about this pair.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take this project, probably several months to get it completed since this is a side personal project that I have to complete in my spare time. I hope to see it finished by the end of this year. By the way, I still don’t have a publisher for it so if you are one and you are interested, please contact me.