An Idea

Posted by Salvador Castío

Lately I’ve been thinking that I need to do something in between my regular blog posts. I feel as if there needs to be spontaneous updates of some sort in order to keep me going and to keep this blog interesting. I had an idea today that I’m hoping will help fill the void between blog posts. I’m going to start posting and sharing from my WordPress iPhone app while out and about or when I’m feeling inspired to write something off-the -cuff that doesn’t warrant a full blog post. I feel good about this – little nigglings of ideas and whatnot before a blog post seems pretty damn appealing to me.

The graphic that you see here is a promo graphic that I recently created to share on social media. It’s an updated version of an earlier graphic that I had created late last year. My work is starting to reflect my 19th and 20th Century fine art influences more and more and I want everything I do to reflect this. The drawing in the graphic is a vignette taken from my carnet. I’ve had very favorable feedback from people that have seen this and that has led me to consider working this up into a formal drawing. Many hours would have to come beforehand before I could arrive at a suitable finish. Although I do not consider myself a graphic designer I will admit to liking the design of this graphic very much as it accurately reflects qualities I want associated with my work such as world-class draftsmanship, elegant design, and brilliant execution.

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. 

Getting On With It

Posted by Salvador Castío

Summer. 2019. Pencil Preliminary (Study II). Pencil in sketchbook. 

As a self confessed and proud perfectionist I admit that I drive myself a little crazy at times. I’m not ashamed of being nit picky at all as that keeps mediocrity at bay at all times but sometimes I do feel the need to just jump in and get on with it. Spontaneity doesn’t mean that quality has to suffer. Solid draftsmanship is solid draftsmanship and that doesn’t change.

Lately, I’ve felt the need to loosen up a bit and shove my hands into the creative dirt. The main thing about all this is that I’ve decided to stop overthinking things and just do them. The only thing that matters now is creating and everything else takes second place to that. Interestingly, this approach is a throwback to past era of my life when I was much more willing to be spontaneous and experimental. Those things have their importance but there must be skill beneath them to give them support otherwise they’re there’s really nothing there.

The drawing that accompanies this post a drawing of a good friend of mine that I recently did in my sketchbook. If you have beautiful friends you should draw them. There’s nothing better than drawing a beautiful woman and capturing her beauty. I’m fortunate to have quite a few highly photogenic friends so I am not too worried about the scarcity of subjects for my pen. There’s definitely more to come. This drawing was fun to do; I left a bit of pencil in for the shading and finished off the rest in pen and ink. I’m pleased with the results I’ll probably rework this and refine it a bit and turn into a proper finished piece so as to do it’s gorgeous subject justice.

Empathy and Finesse

Posted by Salvador Castío



It’s late on an August evening, and I’ve spent the better part of my day behind my drawing table working on a myriad of projects, including this blog post. It’s stifling in my studio tonight, but work must continue. People often ask me how much I work daily; perhaps a better question would be how much I don’t work. I’m up early, around 7:30, and I’m in the studio for a significant part of the day. Lately, I’ve been racking up the hours — I’m starting to slowly edge back to those 14 hour days that were so common in the past.

I have wanted to do the drawing I’ve chosen for this new blog post for quite some time. It’s been quite a while since my last post; I’ve put off making a new post because I couldn’t bear to bring myself to publish yet another journal page filled with drawings of food or coffee-swilling patrons. These things are so commonplace nowadays that they have become cliche. Surely there are more interesting things to draw. There has to be more to a post for me than the shine of silverware and the ritualistic act of daily caffeine ingestion. 

Recently, the world has felt so dark. The news can be so overwhelming, and it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness and despair. As always, there are those individuals that burn like beacons in the dark, showing us the way forward. Powerful women are stepping forward worldwide to guide us. These include Americans like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ruth Bader Ginsberg and international figures such as Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist, and Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. On March 15, 2019, Christchurch, New Zealand, suffered a horrific terrorist attack where a gunman killed 51 people and injured 49 others at two local mosques during Friday prayer. In the wake of these attacks, the Prime Minister reached out to the victims’ families; she held them close to her as they came to grips with such a senseless and cowardly act. Most importantly, within a month, she helped pass legislation that banned assault-style weapons in New Zealand. 

I remember seeing images of her comforting her bereft compatriots on social media, and her empathy moved me that the Prime Minister showed them. Her actions were the exact opposite of what I see here in the United States — her actions were heartfelt and genuine as opposed to being just another photo op. This portrait is the first in a series of new drawings to celebrate exceptional women. 

What you see here is a preliminary drawing that will lead to a finished piece. I’m still working it out and finessing the prime minister’s features. It may look finished, but I can assure you that this is far from done. Her face is the most crucial element of my drawing, so her features have to be spot-on. I hope that I can capture the heartfelt empathy in her gaze. Showing such emotion is a challenge that I’m excited to be undertaking. 

My Life On Paper

Posted by Salvador Castío

Keeping a sketch-journal for the better part of three decades is respectable to say the least. I used to go to cafes to draw and I’d never see anyone else doing the same thing. It was strange to see that. Okay, maybe every once in a great while I’d see another bloke with a sketchbook but it wasn’t very often that I did. Nowadays, that’s changed. Now, it seems like everyone is lugging around a sketchbook — I think that’s great. I, personally, can’t imagine myself not carrying my sketchbook around with me. What if something amazingly awesome were to happen in front of me? Can’t draw it without my sketchbook.

Over the years, I’ve written and drawn about all sorts of stuff in my journal: ideas, thoughts, feelings, opinions, you name it, I’ve written about it. Throughout my years of graphic journaling I’ve felt like there’s never been a real balance between what I write and what I draw. I think that a successful sketch-journal should reflect both aspects in equal measure. Ah, the ongoing struggles of a working artist. I wonder how many people ever imagine such things when looking through my sketch-journal? My gut instinct tells me not many. I’m not surprised and ultimately I don’t really care.

There’s always something to write about and there’s always something to draw; every single day is filled with strange and wonderful things done by people who are strange and who do strange things all the time. You just never know what you’re going to see and hear on any given day. Good, bad, stupid, pompous, disgusting — it’s all game for my trusty Rapidograph. There’s going to be a whole lot of that in my forthcoming journal pages. What will make it all different is the approach that I’ll be taking: a little more honest, a little more reflective, a little sarcastic, a little more to the point. It’s the only way to do this. Barbara Bradley, the head of the illustration department at The Academy of Art College in the 80s used to say, “Put it down with authority,” when it came to drawing; those sage words can also apply to writing as well. When someone looks at my sketch-journal my life has to be on those pages otherwise I didn’t do what I was supposed to do.

Lastly, a word about the sketch for this post. I’d been sitting at my local coffeehouse drawing and sucking up the free AC for the better part of a Sunday Afternoon and I had started to pack my things up when suddenly, outside the window, I saw this vision of beauty appear. There was no way that I was leaving before drawing her. Beautiful dark eyes, long lashes, long dark thick hair, how could I resist? Thankfully, she sat for quite a while as she conversed thus allowing  me to immortalize her in the pages of my journal. Job done.

It Is What It Is

Posted by Salvador Castío

El Arte No Es Para Imbeciles Color

Sometimes, an idea and an opinion come together in a spontaneous and very satisfying way. That’s basically what happened when I drew this page. I wanted to play around and experiment and see what would come of that, so I started with no preconceived idea in mind. I used to use this approach a lot years ago — Usually, I was pleasantly surprised with the results. 

I started with a shape and that shape led to another and another – you get the idea. Despite the fact that I drew this directly in ink, it still took me a while to finish. As you might guess, adding the crosshatching and building up the shading takes me a while. I’ve been drawing this way for 20 years; it stems from my love of drawing in ink that began in my teens and the satisfying feeling of repetitiously drawing line after line. Maybe it’s some sort of OCD thing, I’m not sure. What I do know is that it’s very gratifying to me. 

As I got closer to finishing my cubist-inspired image, I started to feel that it needed some text to accompany it. I started to think what I could make a statement about. You know it didn’t take me long to come up with an answer. As an artist, I have some very definite ideas when it comes to art. Sometimes, I come to my wit’s end with people’s simplistic opinions about art and artists. Therefore, I decided that a straightforward, no holds barred, statement is what was needed here. The statement came fairly quickly: “El arte no es para imbéciles.” Yes, it’s true, sometimes I really feel that art is not for imbeciles. Is it ever? Does that sound elitist? Maybe it does — if it does, then so be it. I offer no apologies for this. 

Art isn’t supposed to always be beautiful; if you view art with such a narrow point of view, then you fail to understand what art is all about. That’s like thinking that life is always good or bad — we all know that it isn’t either of those things all the time. Things are getting interesting in what i’m doing and I’m liking it. This whole other side of me is spilling onto the page and that’s bringing forth all sorts of ideas. Watch out, here I come!