“The Spell” by Koldo Barroso”

“The Spell” is the title of my latest illustration, which marks the beginning of a new series of works under a similar aesthetic. Although it may look simple, I believe this is one of the most complex works I have ever done. Not for the techniques, but for the aesthetic concept. I’ve been working on this concrete illustration for the last three weeks but to be honest I believe I’ve been working on this for most of my life. And I feel that it didn’t happen until now that everything seemed to come to life.

To me, this illustration is not just another illustration, but the result of long time experiments putting together an aesthetic concept of my own that I can apply to all my illustration work. I started working with some of the style ideas and concepts that you can see in “The Spell” when I was a teenager. During my engraving days in the late 90’s I tried to apply many of the style lines that I have used here, and you may also see things from different characteristics from all my former works. Before this, I never really felt they worked.

As an artist and amateur musician/composer, I always had the feeling that I had a problem because of the many influences and sources that I get inspiration from. I am one of these people who gets really passionate about hundreds of art styles and thousands of music styles. At home, you can listen to anything you can imagine, from the most experimental and minimalistic music to commercial pop music, from the most delicate pieces of classical music to punk rock and industrial music. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the trouble starts when you try to put all of these things together in the same cocktail, which is exactly what I tried to do in my 1997 solo album “Open”. The result was pretty crazy!

The same thing happens with my illustration and I’ve always had the feeling that I was trying to use different styles in every work and the result was always much too diverse. There’s nothing wrong with working in different styles, but I believe that every artist needs to find his own identity that always shines through every different work, regardless of the style, techniques, and concept. And this is what I’ve been trying to achieve for a long time. Because of my different and sometimes opposite influences, I have to admit it has been really hard.

During the last few months, I’ve concentrated on different experiments to achieve it and have done a lot of thinking, writing, putting ideas in order, and sketching. The making of this particular illustration has been a real struggle, but I really believe it’s been worthwhile because I feel I finally found the way to make all my ideas and concepts click together in the same image. The most important to me is that I believe I managed to come with a concept for the “style sheet” that I will apply to my forthcoming work, regardless of the style, techniques and concept I will be using.

This “style sheet” is not just about the aesthetics, it has a lot to do with the concept of how I want and need to portrait my own reality. It has to do with the way I see and think about life. And it also has to do with my personal way of interpreting the worlds of mental and spiritual energies. For this, I have been working in a series of patterns of characteristics that I will be applying to the different characters, landscapes, and atmospheres that I use in the future. I am also putting special attention on the composition and balance.

Original sketch of the cat

Talking a bit more about “The Spell” in particular, the origin of the illustration is in a sketch of the cat character that I tried to use in my former illustration “La Kuruta”. I finally decided not o use it because the character of the cat was so strong that was stealing the protagonism from the witch, so I dropped it from the picture and I decided to start a new work with it.

To come with this illustration has been for me just like doing a crossword, trying to get the right harmony in every detail. This is one of the influences of Eastern art, Feng Shui, the Golden Rule, and other aspects related with philosophy, spirituality and understanding of life. It has to do with the power of geometry and the power of the images to influence positively in our energies. I know all this may sound a little confusing, so I’d rather let you see how it develops in the future. In the next illustrations to come I will be working more with colors and techniques may vary a little, but I hope to find the way to keep the same aesthetic style. I feel blessed that life is giving me this opportunity to share a little bit of my own world with people like you. An I hope you get “enchanted” by “The Spell” because I guess this is pretty much what you’ll be seeing from me in the future.