INTERVIEW WITH RAUL THE THIRD:
Today Raúl the Third, artist for the just released graphic novel Lowriders in Space, joins LitPick for Six Minutes with an Illustrator! Raúl was featured in three recent exhibits: The Community Art Initiative Artist Project: And Their Families at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Carroll and Sons Art Gallery, the Fitchburg Art Museum and his first solo museum exhibition at the Museum of Art, New Hampshire. He teaches classes on drawing and comics for kids at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Maude Morgan Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, and Young Audiences Massachusetts.
How did you get started as an illustrator?
Ginee Seo, our editor for Lowriders in Space, made my dream of being a comic book artist a reality. Big love to her and the entire Lowriders in Space team! With this project and Cathy Camper's amazing script, I was able to create work that I have been training for my entire life. I had dreamed of becoming a comic book artist for as far back as I can remember. I even went so far as to practice my signature and created different pen names for myself, as a teen I signed my work as Roznog Zelaznog. In High School I started to take my portfolio to the San Diego Comic Con in the hopes that I could get a job cartooning and drop out of school. It never happened!
It was in Boston, MA that I began to carve out a name for myself as an artist. I drew comics for self produced zines, designed posters for local bands, taught cartooning workshops at local libraries and exhibited my work at local coffee shops like the Diesel Cafe in Somerville. This somehow led to museum and gallery exhibitions and to the fateful day that Cathy Camper and I were introduced by Dave Kiersh, one of the most talented comic book artists I have ever known.
Who influenced you?
Early on my influence came from the sister cities I was raised in. The sights, smells and sounds of Juarez, Mexico, Ysleta and El Paso TX as well as the apartment complex my brothers and I lived in filled with kids running about causing all manner of mischief. Storytelling was a vital part of growing up and my Mom and Dad would recount with vivid details stories of their childhoods as well as those of our relatives from far away lands. Discovering comic books at the local 7-11 opened my eyes to telling stories through dynamic drawing. Images by Jim Aparo, Norm Breyfogle, Sal Buscema, Marc Hansen and just about any artist that was found on the spinner racks were devoured by my hungry eyes. At the age of 15 I got a job at Bill's Coins, Cards, Stamps and Comics and my world was expanded by artists such as Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, Phoebe Gloeckner, Howard Cruse, Peter Kuper, Dave Cooper, Art Spiegelman, Eastman and Laird, Love and Rockets, Rick Veitch. These artists helped me understand that comic books didn't need to just be about superheroes and that they could be very personal forms of expression. When Elaine Bay and I moved to Boston I began to visit museums and galleries for the first time in my life and I began to create works of art that I could imagine being exhibited at such places and before long it came true.
Do you have a favorite artist/subject/medium?
I love how artists are linked to one another across time and space and that we are each adding to the conversation with every new work we create. When I was illustrating Lowriders in Space, I thought about the chap books that were illustrated by the Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada and how his palette was limited to two colors to keep the printing cheap. This made the book affordable by the general population which was very poor and introduced loads of aspiring artists to his work. I wanted a similar feel for our book and so I decided to use black, blue and red BIC ballpoint pens, which I knew any boy or girl could have access to. Posada's drawing influenced artists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Jose Orozco because his work was accessible to the poor and working class and the dreams and struggles of people have always been a favorite subject of mine. All of my ideas begin with a drawing on paper but I have used many different mediums that best suit the series or projects I am working on. Last year my medium of choice were Bic pens for Lowriders in Space and a variety of mark making tools for works at New Hampshire Art Museum and Fitchburg Art museum.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to be an illustrator?
Begin working on your dream projects today and spend countless hours making them come true. You don't need fancy materials or a big budget to create something amazing. Lowriders in Space was created with a total of 15 ballpoint pens on 112 sheets of paper. Create drawings about things that you are passionate about and that are true to who you are as a person. When you become an adult, leave home for far away places and go on many adventures. Don't define yourself early on and be open to the many possibilities that the world has to offer. You will surprise yourself with all of the different things your imaginative mind is capable of doing.
Where is your favorite place to work?
I have the ability to drop into a drawing trance wherever and anywhere I go. It's like narcolepsy but with a pencil and paper. I love drawing at home, with music or a film on the TV for background noise or in a coffee shop with muffled voices and endless cups of coffee keeping me company, but since I became a father, parks and playgroups have became drawing haunts as well. My wife, Elaine Bay, is also an artist, so working in the same room together is very inspirational, like the cartooning studio days of yesteryear we influence and inspire each other constantly.
What else would you like to tell us?
Comic books are one of the most important art forms because of the diverse groups of people that they can reach. Unlike an art museum in the big city, a comic book can introduce a person in the middle of nowhere to drawing and writing at their local convenience store or library, inspiring them to become tomorrow's artists. It makes me incredibly happy and proud that today's comic book artists are making books whose themes and characters are much more diverse than ever before.
Raúl, thank you very much for spending six minutes with LitPick! This has been an extremely interesting interview! Congratulations on the release of Lowriders in Space!
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