Simón Prades, Illustrator

What leads you to be who you are now?

My mother. I'm serious. Surely there is that curiosity about life, and all those are included in it (many people) that encourage me to create images and in a certain way be able to share my fantasies with them.

At first, in my childhood, draw led me to create worlds, was something that evaded myself and released me from school and their sometimes absurd rules.
I painted on walls with friends, began to take more interest in art, and in large important artists such us Goya, Rembrandt, Schiele, Giacometti and there stories.

After a few years I took degree in Design (which is not that much in my opinion) and produced many pictures later. At that time "Create worlds" had been became a profession, with all the good and bad that it entailed.

Nowadays, it takes me more effort to go deep and recreate in the pleasure of drawing, because there is a customer, and who sets the rules, or sometimes is the not much available time which limits me on what I really like.

But: I make a living from drawing and rearching ideas - which is gratifying and I prefer it than to spend a whole day enclosed in a office at a boss's service. So I am very happy and thankful for what I do and my job.

Do you have a favorite technique? Could you tell us about your personal experience as FreeLancer?

Techniques I like best are the ink, pencil, watercolour, which together they sum up the total: the drawing. I also like engraving and serigraph, but only I practice it as a hobby in my spare time, not for comissions.

I work a lot on the computer, but do not draw with it , because I think digital methods can not complete drawings on paper. Computers are for trying different things (eg the composition and colors) and then change them without erasing the original. All illustrators of those I am a fan like Vice Ngai, Sam Weber, John Hendrix, David Foldvari, Goni Montes or Steve Brodner work basically by hand.

The more positive experiences so far have been working for newspapers and magazines, I often do but with hardly any time. It's the one you require, but goes well, you can give great satisfaction and also lets you express yourself , and express a bit from your personal vision things happening and happening in the world .

Of course I also had failures, and there are commissions that ended badly (often this happens a lot in advertising), when you draw ideas coming out from publicity agents never touched a pencil but that they have an image in their heads, and try to take it from you, killing all creative and artistic energy. Luckily I had a few bad experiences and if had them, I learned from them.