Did your mom and grandma tell you stories about a witch when you were kids? La Kuruta is the witch my grandma used to tell us about when I was a kid. So she represents the stereotype of the old witch from my childhood. I’ve always wanted to portray her, so her she is.

As kids, my sister Susana and I used to listen to my grandmother Leo telling stories about this old witch who lived in the roofs of her home in downtown Madrid. She used to mention her whenever she wanted us to behave, menacing us with things like: “If you’re not good La Kuruta is coming to get you“. It was pretty scary, but not serious because whenever we were good kids my grandma used to give us easter eggs and then say La Kuruta brought them for us. So it was kind of cute to think of this old scary witch who was a sweetheart after all. That’s the way I wanted to portray her.

I can also remember going upstairs in my grandma’s flat and she would show me the window and tell me that La Kuruta lived in the roofs. The flat was in the top and, at night, whenever I heard sound from above I would think it was the witch walking on her tiptoes. Pretty scary!

For the location of this illustration I used a series of pictures of roofs of Madrid, including pictures that my sister sent me of her own flat in Madrid, which used to be our grandparents’. I have always found the views from the rooftops in Madrid very inspiring and I am keeping in mind doing other illustrations featuring the roofs of other cities, such as Paris and London.

Original pencil drawing of La Kuruta

I really don’t know where the character of La Kuruta came from, maybe my grandma made it up as many other things she used to say. I haven’t heard of anybody else talking about this character but is possible that she would also hear it from the local legends in her homeland, in the village of Lendoño in the Basque country. In my illustration, I have tried to portray the witch the way my grandmother would have though of her as a kid, with the mentality of a little girl from a poor family of farmers in a tiny village in the Basque country during the early century. Probably she wouldn’t think of her with the same cultural references that I had as a kid, meaning the classical witch with a hight top hat and a broom. I rather think of the witch as a character inspired by the local nature, so I decided that my grandma would probably portray her like some sort of scary crow or maybe like an old and ugly woman in the village.

Original sketches for La Kuruta

The Basque country is full of mythology and legendary characters similar to her, such as Mari (a witch), Jentilak (giants), and Prakagorri (brownies). I’ve always wanted to do an illustration book to compile all of these characters and is possible that I decide to go for it some day so this illustration will be there. Regarding witches, the Basque country is also a well-known place for witches and akelarres (sabbaths). The most famous legend is the one about the witches in Zugarramurdi, Navarra, related to the trial in 1610 and the burning of 12 women accused of witchcraft. In relation with the subject of witches, I’ve been also working in a very different illustration, not for children, inspired in two witches who actually lived in the area where I live now in north Madrid. I’ll be talking about this sometime soon.

Another book I would like to do sometime where this illustration may fit is a compilation of illustrations of Spanish popular scary characters, meaning those that the parents use to threaten the kids, such as The Man In The Moon and The Boogie Man. Some of the most famous “monsters” in the Spanish culture are El Coco, El Hombre del Saco, El Sacamantecas and El Destripaterrones. Most of these scary characters are not inventions but real killers who became famous in Spain for their horrible actions and got those nicknames. This is very interesting subject related to the popular culture in the villages in Spain, we call this “profound Spain”. I have the feeling that the collective memory in Spain and many of these stories are fading away and that makes me sad. I miss La Kuruta, I miss her chocolate eggs, and I miss my grandma the most!

I found this advertisement for Moog synthesizers in an old issue of the Spanish music magazine “Popular-1″, from April 1973. Sadly, in those days these kind of instruments were really expensive for most of the Spanish groups and it was usual that the recording studios would include synthesizers as part of their services. In this ad you can see three of the first models from Moog produced during the 70’s: the infamous Minimoog, Sonic Six and Satellite. I used to own a Moog Prodigy produced in 1979 that could scream like a devil.

Without a doubt one of the most characteristic sounds from my childhood was the synthesizer. Some people may not have notice it’s presence but I can swear it was present in every home during the 70’s: music, cartoons, movies, commercials, radio… Everywhere! It was impossible to scape from it’s sinuous charm. Today, I can swear that it’s sound is always around in my studio and I’m sure it has an influence in my art, as everything else.

These wonderful machines had been working since the 20’s and by 1970 they started being sold for the big public when the first portable synthesizer -the Minimoog- was produced by Robert Moog. However, in Spain this instrument would remain pretty unadvertised. I believe that the first Spanish band to use one was Los Relampagos in 1968, in heir fantastic song “La Danza del Bufón”. Teddy Bautista -keyboardist from Ciclos- has coined the privilege of having been the first Spanish musician to import a synth. But I’m pretty sure that it was used before by Eduardo Polonio. Another Spanish pioneer in the use of synthesizers was Jesús de la Rosa, from the legendary band Triana, and he actually helped to make it’s sound popular in the 70’s.

Here are some of the dearest memories of the synthesizer from my childhood:

• The wonderful collection of sounds created by the genius of Raymond Scott for Warner Bros. Cartoons. Synthesizers and cartoons together. What else can you ask for?
• The robotic verbiage of R2D2 in “Star Wars” created by Ben Burtt with a ARP 2600 synthesizer.
• The musical conversation in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” created by Philip Dodds with an ARP synthesizer.
• The unforgettable radio commercials in the Sunday evening sport shows, using bits from Vangelis and Keith Emerson.
• The beautiful electronic version of Debussy’s “Arabesques” by Tomita (entitled “Snowflakes Are Dancing”) opening the children TV show “El Planeta Imaginario”. This show, by the way, did a great job by inviting children to read books every week.
• The wonderful opening of the TV show “Informe Semanal” by R. Beltran, which sounded quite a lot like “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder.

A pesar del enorme retraso que en España existía, como en casi todo, en 1973 en el resto de Europa y en Estados Unidos los sintetizadores ya formaban parte de las herramientas de trabajo más usadas por los artistas. Hay que tener en cuenta que los primeros prototipos de sintetizador ya habían aparecido en la primera década del siglo 20 y fueron utilizados desde en los años 50 por compositores de música avantñgarde y concreta, tales como Stockhausen y Edgar Varese. Algunos de los artistas pioneros en el uso del sintetizador a finales de los años 60 fueron Walter Carlos, Jean Jacques Perrey, Morton Subotnick, Bruce Haack, y Iannis Xenakis. Por otro lado, en el mundo de la música rock los primeros en utilizarlos fueron The Beatles, Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Curved Air y The Nice.

Lo cierto es que, aunque éstas maravillosas máquinas ya llevaban danzando desde los años 20, no fue hasta 1970 cuando se extendieron de forma comercial, con la fabricación del primer sintetizador portátil (el Minimoog) a manos de Robert Moog. Sin embargo, en España el sintetizador seguía siendo un gran desconocido. No tengo muchos datos contrastados al respecto pero, si no me equivoco, los primeros en usar uno de éstos aparatos en España fueros Los Relámpagos en 1968, con su fantástico tema “La Danza del Bufón”. A Teddy Bautista, teclista de Ciclos, se le atribuye el galardón de ser el primer músico español en importar un sintetizador (quién te ha visto y quién te ve, Teddy). Sin embargo, me consta que otro de los primeros artistas en utilizar y experimentar con éste tipo de tecnología fue el músico madrileño Eduardo Polonio, que ya en 1969 los utilizaba. Jesús de la Rosa, del fantástico grupo Triana, fue otro de los artistas que más ayudaron a la popularidad del sonido del sintetizador en España en los años 70.

Para finalizar, aquí van algunos de los recuerdos más entrañables de sintetizador de nuestra generación Chiripitifláutica que puedo recordar:

• La maravillosa colección de sonidos creados por el genio Raymond Scott para los dibujos animados de la Warner Bros.
• Ese pedazo de sintetizador analógico que acompañaba aquellas cassettes de villancicos navideños de nuestra infancia en las que cantaban en falsete adultos haciéndose pasar por niños con un resultado cuanto menos inquietante.
• Los sonidos de R2D2 de “La Guerra de las Galaxias” creados por Ben Burtt en un sintetizador ARP 2600.
• El inolvidable soliloquio de la película “Encuentros en la 3a Fase” creado por Philip Dodds con un sintetizador ARP.
• Las inolvidables cuñas en los programas de radio a base extractos del gran maestro de la electrónica, Vangelis.
• La bellísima versión electrónica de “Arabesques” de Debussy a manos de Tomita (titulada “Snowflakes Are Dancing”) que abría la serie de televisión de “El Planeta Imaginario”.
• La formidable cabecera musical del programa “Informe Semanal” de R. Beltran, claramente que recordaba a el clásico “I Feel Love” de Donna Summer y Giorgio Moroder.

As a kid, this collection of stickers was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. Just like every other kid from my generation, I grew up watching the films of Lugosi and Boris Karlof, and The Munsters on the TV. So all these characters were my idols. The appreciation for the concept of the monster still remains in my art and illustration and right now I’m actually preparing a children book about monsters.

I remember I used to spend hours and hours looking at these stickers during the summer. When I recovered the album I would still remember in detail many of the drawings. I remember the very first time I saw the stickers in the kiosk, I was completely fascinated!

The collection was published in Spain in the mid ’70s by Dunkin/Gallina Blanca and it features 84 stickers and a 20 pages album. The envelopes would contain 3 stickers and one strawberry chewing gum for the mark Dunkin. The original price of the album as you can see in the picture was 5 pesetas (about 2 cents of a dollar today). Can you imagine what a kid would do today with that amount of money?

Although I’m not a collectionist, I had the opportunity of recovering this collection a few years ago. The stickers were in the envelopes and the album was completely untouched, so it was really thrilling for me get it completed. As a kid I never got to finish this collection but I was obsessed with it. I think it didn’t get very popular and it was not easy to find other kids to trade stickers. So when I got this full collection Naomi handed me the envelopes little by little and it took several months to get the whole album completed. It was really fun and exciting. I was also able to get the original promotional box that contained the albums in the shops. What else could I ask for?

I think the idea for this collection is just great, a combination of humor and monsters in a contemporary style from the 70’s in a hippy fashion. It’s a shame that the album doesn’t give any credit to the artist who did the illustrations because I think it’s such an impressive work! This is something that would happen very often in Spain during the 60’s and 70’s: children illustrators didn’t get any credit of their work, they were invisible people, like if the drawings were made by nobody.

I keep thinking about doing a revision of this collection in a similar style, something contemporary, but at the same time I wonder if the kids today really know who the hell are Mr. Hyde and the Mummy.

Esta colección de cromos la editó Dunkin/Gallina Blanca a mediados de los 70 y consta de 84 cromos adhesivos y un álbum de 20 páginas. En la parte posterior de la cubierta se incluía publicidad sobre algunos de los productos asociados a las marcas Dunkin y Gallina Blanca (PicaPica, Chimos, Loquitos, Stick). El precio de original del álbum era de 5 pts. áFiguraos lo que harían ahora los niños con 5 céntimos de euro! Los sobres contenían 3 cromos y un chicle Dunkin de fresa, siempre de fresa.

Aunque yo no soy coleccionista, tuve la suerte de poder recuperar ésta colección hace unos años. Además, la conseguí con los cromos sin pegar y el álbum intacto, y me hizo una ilusión tremenda, entre otras cosas porque jamás logré terminar ésta colección en su momento. Si no recuerdo mal, no fue muy popular y resultaba difícil encontrar a otros niños que la hicieran para poder cambiar cromos. Así que mi mujer me distribuyó los cromos en sus sobres poco a poco y tardamos varios meses en terminar el álbum. Fue realmente divertido y muy emocionante. Además también pude hacerme con la caja promocional que contenía los álbumes en las tiendas.

De pequeño yo estaba obsesionado con ésta colección, era una de las cosas más alucinantes que había visto. Como todos los niños de mi generación, crecí viendo las películas de Bela Lugosi y Boris Karloff, y Los Munsters en la tele, así que éstos personajes eran mis ídolos. La idea de la colección me parece genial, esa combinación humorística entre los monstruos y el estilo contemporáneo y medio-hippy de los 70. Es una pena que en el álbum no se haga referencia al artista que dibujo las ilustraciones porque son un trabajo impresionante. Yo, que me dedico profesionalmente a la ilustración, he pensado más de una vez en dibujar una versión actualizada de ésta colección. ¡Lástima que nadie lo editaría! Más que nada porque hoy día los niños ya no saben quienes son Mr. Hyde ni La Momia, y al fin y al cabo ya casi no quedan colecciones de cromos.

Recuerdo que me tiraba las horas muertas mirando estos cromos, si no recuerdo mal durante el verano. Tanto es así que cuando recuperé la colección recordaba con todo lujo de detalle algunos de los dibujos. Me acuerdo que la primera vez que vi en el quiosco los sobres quedé totalmente fascinado. Además, ésta debió ser una de las primeras colecciones de cromos en pegatina que apareció en España. ¡Una chulada!

Por cierto, que como podéis ver en la foto el álbum venía con toda una promoción de productos, de los cuales seguro que os acordáis. Yo me acuerdo muy bien de Loquitos y de los polvos Pica-pica que venían en su botellita de plástico.

“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.

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.