During the last few weeks, in the process of moving from Spain to the USA, Naomi and I have felt completely overwhelmed by the generosity of the people who surround us. People who makes us realize how love and friendship are most most important thing we will ever carry in our luggage and who will always stay by our side no matter how far we are: family and friends who helped us to make our dream come true unselfishly and people who wish the best for us even when they realize they may not see us again for a long time.

The farewell with our best friends was completely moving time. They gave us a surprise and they all gathered at Samper and Meia’s -our best friend’s- place. They came from different corners in Spain: Lali from Barcelona, Paco an his wife Ana and their daughters from Algeciras, Rodri and Piedad from Avila, Jorge and Bea from Madrid… We spent the weekend together and those moments are printed in gold letters in our minds. You made us leave with our hearts full of love!

A gift from Iban Barrenetxea

During the last few months before moving to the US, I had the privilege of starting a friendship with the Spanish illustrator Iban Barrenetxea. Like me, Iban is currently starting a new career as an illustrator for books after a long time in the design business. He is one of the most talented illustrators I know today. His works have been extremely inspirational for me but -apart from this- I had the pleasure of share with him my love for England and British literature. Iban and his wife Marta -just like Naomi and me- they like to go hiking in the mountains in a village in Gipuzkoa called Elgoibar, which is not far where my family’s homeland in Orduña. And is one of my favorite places on earth! The week before we moved to the US, I got a package from them. It contained a sample of tree leaves from the woods in Elgoibar that Marta set for us, which I will keep as treasure because I had in mind to pick some leaves from the wood as a memory from Spain and never did. Also, two special printings of Iban’s illustrations signed by him. He made me feel just like a little kid!

A gift from Ester García Cortés

Because of our moving to a different continent, Naomi and I had to leave most of our belongings behind and start from zero. So we gave away a lot of our furnitures and goods in Spain. I decided to give my drawing board to another illustrator who could use it because for me it’s just like an musical instrument: you need to give it to someone who is going to use and create new works. I had the privilege to know the work of a young Spanish illustrator called Ester García Cortés. She is truly one of the most talented young Spanish artists I have lately know and she recently moved to Madrid to start a career as an illustrator. So I offered my drawing board to her and she unselfishly thought of her friend Monica, a young illustrator who was in need of it. So a few days before I moved, Ester and his boyfriend Juan Pedro came home for the board and I had the privilege of meeting two extremely nice and interesting people. I wish I met them before! They gave us a bottle of wonderful Spanish wine from Cáceres -where they’re from- and a beautiful original pencil color illustration of a gentleman lion that Ester had done for me. I was completely in shock! Of course, Iban’s and Ester’s illustrations will be the first things to be framed and hang on the walls of our new studio!

Mónica adopts a drawing board

Just a few days before our moving, we got a letter in the mail from our friend Lali. It was a beautiful envelope sending us congratulations and a bunch of dollars to buy us a nice dinner by the seaside in Bellingham. Something we will never forget. Lali is looking after moving herself to Vancouver after she visited Canada last Spring, so we just can’t wait for the moment we can invite her to din out in Bellingham!

Congratulations from Lali

I also want to show our gratitude to a very special couple: Bev and Rog. Bev runs a web site dedicated to Bellingham and also a forum for Bellingham residents which is pretty much starting now. During the last months, we needed to do a lot of research about Bellingham, Whatcom and Washington area for our moving. I really don’t know what had we done without Bev’s web sites. She was so kind and patient to answer to all of our neverending questions about this and that. She’s been like a guardian angel for us! We admire how she loves what she does for a living and puts all of her heart on it. I wonder how much better this world would be if there was more people doing so! She and Rog came to live to Bellingham 6 years ago and they are completely in love with this place. But, on top of it, she and Rog has been our first friends and helping hands in Bellingham. Last weekend they drove us for a tour around town -just like real tour guides- and showed us their love for every corner of it. To add more fuel, they gave as a TV, because we didn’t have one yet. It was really overwhelming!

All I want to say is that our hearts are full of gratitude with our family, friends, and even people we didn’t really know much yet. We moved to the USA with a few suitcases but our real baggage is in our heart and it is as full of precious things as any king’s palace!

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It’s been a long time since my last post. So this is my first post from my new home in Bellingham, WA. Naomi and I have been here for 11 days now and things are starting to settle down a little and we already started back to work in our new studio. We love Bellingham! We are really happy in this quiet place and we realize it was worthwhile the enormous work and sacrifices we’ve got to do to get here. So this is the beginning a new stage for our lives and our careers. And I can already tell how inspirational the mountains, the woods and the sea in this area are going to be for my forthcoming work.

So I will be updating this web site regularly with new illustration works and blog posts like before. I need to do some new works for my portfolio and start keeping in touch with editors and agencies in the area and anywhere in the US and start moving things. It’s going to be a bit busy but very very exciting for me!

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The Roothorn sculpture by Koldo Barroso, 2006.

The Roothorn is a character for my book in works “Portraits from the Dreamlands” that I created before I started writing the project, two years ago. I actually designed it for being sculpted and a picture of it was used for a Christmas greeting in 2006. At the moment, it hadn’t been painted yet. In the first place, I was going to leave it unpainted in the original white color in order to work later on the computer with different colors. It didn’t quite work so I decided to paint it afterwards.

For the character of the Roothorn I was inspired by a particular walk by the mountains in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain, where I used to walk. It is a beautiful area where Naomi and I spotted deer a few times and there is a beautiful cascade surrounded by huge pine trees. On top of the cascade, in the winter, there are always clean waters filtering from the top of the mountain. I love to drink water straight from the leaking rocks.

All these things gave me the inspiration for this character, the Roothorn, which is a spirit of wisdom from the nature: half tree, half deer and half human. You may encounter him in a dream if you ever get lost in the woods and you walk for so long that you start getting weak and dizzy. The Roothorn will come to you and let you drink fresh and clean water pouring down from his hands. But this is a long story that I will detail in the book “Portraits of the Dreamlands”.

For the making of this sculpture I built an structure made of wire and wood and I sculptured on it with polymer clay and plaster. During the late 80’s, I used to make a living by selling sculptures with a similar technique. For the body, I used different material from the nature in the same area where I got inspired, such as pine tree scales. I also used some artificial materials for the moss.

I plan to keep doing more sculptures in the future but I will want to try different kinds of materials that can be easily transported so I can get them exhibited. It’s a project that it be developed in the next few years. Part of it involves mixing sculpture, photography and illustration.

When Naomi and I started planning our moving to the US, I realized it was going very difficult to transport this sculpture, especially because of the big horns. So I decided to give it away in Spain. Most of the time when we get friends visiting our place they don’t notice my artwork, weather is a sculpture or paintings and drawings. They just don’t pay attention to it and this is an issue that I have tried to learn how to deal with throughout the years, to lower my ego and just let things go. So this time, I decided I was going to give away this sculpture to the first person who would notice it. It’s been in our living room for months and a few people saw it but nobody say a thing about it -even being about 35″ tall- unless I would mention it first. Until my friend Mayte Cruz got into the room one day and spotted it.

Yesterday, we said goodbye to our dear friends Mayte and Julio and their dog Runa who it’s been our “summer guest” for the last few years. They’re moving to Berlin for a month and we won’t be in Spain when they’re back because we are moving to the US by early September. So we had a “goodbye dinner” and of course they took the Roothorn sculpture home. And I know that it will keep stronger an invisible link between us despite of the distance, because we are going to miss them so much!

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I read today in Tor.com about the passing of Pauline Bayes, the celebrated illustrator who worked with two of my favorite writers: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

I think she was one of the most breaking ground illustrators ever. She had a unique style balancing the compositions and working with straight lines and geometry. I especially admire the way she managed to bring the old Medieval and Romanic flat imagery into modern illustration. She was also unique working with black and flat colors.

Pauline’s work will be here for us to enjoy and admire. Thank you Pauline!

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