Q.

Give me an example of how you work with publications? If you are hired to visually support and enhance a story, do you read the story first or stay within the parameters of the visually iconic? Example, where did you start when you were commissioned to draw Charles Dickens for the Christopher Hitchen’s piece in Vanity Fair?

A.

I got an email from Vanity Fair with the article attached and a briefing on dimensions, intended tone, etc. I read the article and sent a sketch by email. Upon confirmation I sent the final art a few days later.

Only a few publications send you the text, because normally they ask for the illustration without having it. More often than not I get a general idea of what will be written, sometimes just a sentence, and I have to come up with a visual idea. For example, one day one art director just told me “do something about intellectuals”. That kind of challenge is common.

Q.

Can you draw sensual? Elegance? Idiocy? Brilliance?

A.

Yes. But I’d have to think about it first.

Q.

For many of us, exposure to an illustrator is someone at an American theme park, sitting on a small chair with an easel, paper and chalk, drawing people. Is this the same in Lisbon?

A.

Well, I guess what you call illustrator differs slightly from country to country. We call what you described a caricaturist, a portraiture artist. Some caricaturists are not good illustrators (or good caricaturists for that matter), and good illustrators are very often not good caricaturists. But I guess that in a broader sense, which I use often, a caricaturist is also an illustrator. Caricature is peculiar in a sense that it has to look like the person you are portraying, there’s no debating. Its’ a specific visual game, and everybody, and I mean everybody, has to get it. In other kinds of

visual work one has some leverage, one can argue a specific point of view, a specific taste and aesthetic reasoning. In caricature, it’s not a matter of opinion or taste. A good caricature HAS to be recognizable, independently of the style of the artist.