Artwork by José Manosalvas

The Void of Lovers. A pilgrim’s artwork…

My name is José Manosalvas. I live in Ecuador. I always have had a strong tendency for drawing, in fact my dream has been always to do something related to it, like illustration. I remember as a child, I grew up with some beautiful illustrations I could find in books from my library. My first music album was at 6 years, Pink Floyd The Wall, my mom gave it to me because I was always contemplating the the incredible artwork of Gerald Scarfe, and I remember drawing those monsters from The Wall in my own style. Unfortunately, things in life doesn’t go as planned and life took me for some other roads, putting drawing away in my teenage years. It was about 8 years ago that my life gave a tremendous shift and I decided to go back to the drawing as a very important and personal need for a project I was doing.

I remember when I took the blank paper sheet, and I was contemplating at it and I was terrified! I think many people could have experience this when staring at a blank paper, with inner fears like we will make too many mistakes, we will “screw” our drawing, we will attempt a piece of artwork only to discover we are not good enough to do it… but my need was stronger than my fear so I state to draw about eight years ago. I’ve been in a personal quest to improve and understand my work.

So here I am after many years of self taught, I have improved, I even have earned my own style, but there some point that there is need of guidance, where to go next, what to do with what I already have. For example holding the pencil one way or another is a detail that I only discovered in the Drawing Academy. I have improved my perspective work a lot and right now these times, I am in my quest to improve human proportions. My need to learn manifests itself in each draw I attempt to do, so I always come to the DA videos, to refresh some content, to practice, until I am satisfied.

So here is my drawing. Sorry about the quality of the photo, it was taken with a cellphone. I am exited just to participate, as I am aware I still have a long way to go; at least now I know I am not giving up drawing for anything in the world, in fact my dream of becoming an illustrator has been reinforced, and I hope you people like it. I have called it The Void of Lovers as I was inspired by The Divine Comedy (no Paolo & Francesca included).

thepilgrim.com.ec