1646 – Issue 4

17 in a short period of time from working with some of the most creative people in the business such as video Director Tim Pope, photographer David Bailey and comedian Mel Smith among others. A global economic crisis then hit in 1992. I was one of the many unfortunate junior creatives falling victim and being made redundant. A change of destiny which steered me towards the US where I spent the following months having a lot of fun traveling around the country, seeing old friends, but before long the novelty wore off and it was time to move on again. I somehow landed in Barcelona with the objective of drawing or painting for a living. Easier said than done! What was it about Barcelona that captivated you? Barcelona seemed to offer exactly what I was looking for at the time: culture, art, history, architecture, design, colour, Mediterranean lifestyle, sunshine and great food! The challenge of not knowing the language or anyone in the city, made it seem even more appealing. All good, but I needed to find work and fast. There didn’t seem any vacancies for teaching jobs (I arrived in October 1993 and all the schools were accounted for), so I decided to head down to Las Ramblas with sketchpad and pencils and start drawing portraits of the passers by which I started selling for 500 pesetas a go. I became a self-proclaimed street artist overnight! The portraits soon turned into quick 5 minute caricatures which were at first atrocious! …all those poor tourists I managed to deform with such lack of finesse! But I soon improved with practice and developed a style which seemed to be appreciated by the customers. In between waiting for customers I had plenty of time to do my own observational sketches of life on Las Ramblas, details of characters I used to see on a daily basis, from all walks of life, young and old. After a couple of years I was looking to publish my caricatures. One day, by chance a young guy and girl, both journalists, walked by my ‘pitch’ on the street and asked if I’d be interested in drawing for a ‘casting’ to find a caricaturist to work regularly for a new local newspaper called the Barcelona Eco which they both worked for. ‘Claro que sí!’, was my retort. So I went along with 3 or 4 other caricaturists, delivered the goods and I was the lucky one who got the job! Seeing my first caricature in print (in May 1996) was a great feeling and inspired me to work on my portfolio to try and pull in more commissions from other publications. I soon started drawing regularly for Catalan regional and Spanish national newspapers and magazines, as well as book illustration and artwork for advertising agencies and theatre companies. It brought in a reasonable income and kept me off the streets, literally! I’ve since mainly focused on political cartooning and caricature work along with editorial illustration to accompany opinion articles and book illustration, but not comic strip cartoons, a genre which doesn’t really interest me. In recent years I’ve also drawn cartoons regularly on Catalan TV3 during debates on a morning television program ‘Els Matins’ as well as creating short 30 second animated videos. I’ve also regularly collaborated for a number of publications including Punch, Private Eye, The New Statesman, The New York Observer, The Progressive Magazine, El País, El Periódico among many others and have illustrated over 20 books.