- From your stay in 2007 in New York your relationship with publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes and Harvard Business Review, has been constant. Have you somehow influenced the Big Apple on your way of drawing?
Not the fact of working for U.S. publications, as I do not organize my work differently according to from who arrives from, but yes the stay in New York indeed. During those months I had occasion to do pretty drawing-work on my sketchbook notebook in the streets. At that time I was already an assiduous "cartoonist on sketchbook", but basically amateur at home. By then I had traveled very little and there all amazed me and it made me feel like drawing. The act of drawing from life, I think it started to influence a lot on me. Came at the time where I had the feeling I my work was at a standstill and it opened to me a pathway. Indeed, back in Barcelona, I was working on a book based on drawings of New York sketchbook. If things do not go wrong, it will be published this year.
- Artists such Robinson drew New York, with his vision "X-ray" as he mentioned in the book "New York line by line" of publisher Electa. In the brochure for BOL, you have drawn the city of New York, but architecture does not usually a recurring theme on your drawings. Do you feel more freedom when your characters lack of architecture?
More than freedom, I think it is a matter of interest. I care more people that architecture, so I like most drawing people and if it is required some of environment. Which does not mean that sometimes I feel tend to draw some cityscape. In the case of Bent On Learning brochure was part of an assignment, but this came as a result of other drawings I did in New York. Anyway, I have little patience for thorough drawings and I already fight enough with the most simple drawings. I really like these panoramic visions of Robinson, for him they may have some "mantra", but when I saw them I could not stop of thinking on sighs and desire of to end.
- What does it mean for an illustrator to be the cover of a magazine like New Yorker where the legendary Saul Steinberg was drawing?
For me it was like a gift even thought I recognize there are covers that I like more than others, for me the New Yorker still has an aura of myth. I guess it is because I associate to Saul Steinberg of course, but also to either Sempé or Charles Addams those are a reference to me. And currently are illustrators like Mark Ulriksen or Maira Kalman. The truth is that I always thought that it was something I would be thrilled. And it really does it!
Thanks and congratulations Luci! By Jose Juan Barba.
Cover, April issue, 2013. The New Yorker.
