Voices Not Forgotten

Posted by Salvador Castío

The world seems crueler in 2019. It’s not really any worse, but it feels like it is. With the advent of the internet and social media, we are all now hyper-aware of all the bad things that happen in our world. The days of hearing only vague details about something happening in another part of the world on the nightly news are gone. Daily, we now get blow-by-blow, live on-the-spot, in-your-face reports about all manner of atrocities that are happening in any part of the world at any given time. 

As time has passed, I have felt an increasingly strong need to use my work to give voices that have gone silent a chance to be heard anew. Every day, there are atrocities committed all over the world that leave me speechless. Last week, it was another mass shooting at a high school in Southern California where more innocent people died, and yesterday and today, it was Fresno and Oklahoma. Tomorrow it’ll be somewhere else, and it’ll happen to people that you are currently completely unaware of. You will learn the names of these innocent souls because their lives will have come to a sudden and unjust end. You might not personally know these people who are lost to senseless violence, but that doesn’t mean they’re unimportant. The names of the innocent deserve to be heard. Their lives deserve to be remembered.

One such person that I recently found out about is 14-year-old Ana Kriégel of Dublin, Ireland. Here’s a bit of Ana’s story from Wikipedia: “Anastasia “Ana” Kriégel (18 February 2004 – 14 May 2018) was a Russian-Irish girl who was subject to a violent attack, murdered and sexually assaulted in an abandoned house in late May 2018 in Lucan near Dublin. Ana was brutally murdered in May 2018 by two 13-year-old boys who lured her to a derelict farmhouse outside the city. Two boys, known only as Boy A and Boy B, who were 13 years old at the time of Kriégel’s death, were convicted of her murder, with one of the boys (Boy A) being further convicted of aggravated sexual assault. The two convicts are the youngest in the history of Ireland to be charged with murder.” 

Ana’s death was a senseless, cold-blooded murder. There are no words for this act of pure evil. Just like so many other victims of violent crime, Ana’s name deserves to be remembered. As an artist, I feel that it’s important for me to share these stories. It’s the least that I can do. I hope that my drawing has done Ana justice. 

Ten Years On Paper

Posted by Salvador Castío


I started my first blog, Cubist Comix, in September 2008, which means my work has been online for a little more than a decade. Back then, blogging was fairly new, and sketch blogs were rare. I remember how confused I was by HTML — it was all Greek to me! Thankfully, my wife understood the basics of this foreign language and was able to help me set up many parts of my blog. Since then, keeping a sketchbook has become incredibly popular and many people are sharing their work on websites, blogs, and social media. Some of the work out there is good, but a majority of it is pedestrian, banal, and poorly executed. I continue to be proud of the quality of work that I insist upon for myself. I’m very hard on myself; I loath mediocrity and the lack of wanting to improve. I am also proud that while I maintain a social media presence, I have not abandoned my blog as many others seem to have done.

The past ten years have been full of changes for me and for my work. It should come as no surprise that my point of view regarding visual journaling and blogging has changed as well. For many years, most of my blog posts consisted of a drawing created during the previous week and the story behind its creation. Believe me, I’ve drawn my share of coffee swilling cafe dwellers over the past decade; it seems there’s a never-ending supply! I loved these drawings and associated posts, but recently I have come to realize that they are just not enough any more. I have come to realize that I need to approach both my work and my posts in a way that is more filled with meaning.

When Twitter first started, people were literally tweeting about the most pedestrian things you can imagine. The novelty of doing that wore out lickety-split. Why? Because no one really cares that you’re going to your kitchen to get a bagel – that’s why. Sketchbooks are wonderful things, but ultimately they need to say something more profound about you beyond what you’re going to eat or what the person sitting next to you looks like. I’ve always been of the opinion that after someone thumbs through the pages of your sketchbook, they should have a good idea about who you are and what you believe in, and the longer I keep a sketchbook, the more I see that this is the truth.

Maybe this approach to keeping a sketchbook and blogging about it isn’t for everyone. After all, opening up and spewing your opinions takes cojones. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it’s something that’s necessary if you’re going to grow as an artist and as an individual. Whether you’re a professional or hobbyist doesn’t matter, what matters is the bravery to embrace change and put yourself, the raw unadulterated you, out there. This is why Barron Storey and Robert Crumb’s sketchbooks will remain as examples for me to follow. Visual journaling has exploded over the past ten years and that’s great, but it’s full potential has yet to be realized. Much like with Twitter, soon folks will realize that fluff wears out its novelty right quick, and only that which has depth will survive.

Louts, Laundry, and Humility

Posted by Salvador Castío

Another week of sketching in the hateful and wretched Central Valley of California, and another blog post. Before you decide to send me hate mail for calling The Central Valley hateful and wretched, please know that I didn’t come up with that gem of a title; that credit goes to the and only Robert Crumb, so address your letters to: R Crumb, Medieval Village, France.

Crumb lived in The Valley for nearly 20 years between the early 70s and early 90s so he knows a thing or two about life here and his assessment isn’t too far off the mark. After 25 years, I can relate to his blunt and disdain filled observations of life here. If you’ve lived in The Central Valley long enough, you know that you need endurance and loads of patience to be here. This week was a good example of that. Between the continuous and oppressive heat that’s enveloped the area and the denizens that live here its been a true test. Thankfully for me, I can express my angst on paper so that helps to keep me productive and sane, so it’s not all bad.

This week’s page started late last week at my local Starbucks as I observed an old guy going on and on about god knows what for almost an hour or so. Cafés remain the best places to find unsuspecting victims who hardly ever move. That’s great for guys like me — it makes it easy to fill sketchbook pages on a regular basis and it keeps me from sitting around and doing nothing. Art is always waiting to happen. The remainder of this week’s page is made up of a quick sketch of a loutish bloke that was sitting at the laundromat on Monday. He was entranced with something on his phone, so it wasn’t hard to preserve his thick-headed likeness in my sketch-journal. Finally, a quote about Internet humility, a strange and deceptive phenomenon that I see a lot of these days. Click the link, it’s a good read.