Ivan Bravo is an artist and magazine illustrator from Barcelona who happens to be subletting a friend’s Williamsburg apartment. I met him at a rooftop BBQ, and he mentioned that he came to New York for a few months to do a film noir style graphic novel, and did I want to see his sketchbooks?

 After flipping through his work-in-progress, we did imprompt interview. Here’s part one.

Ivan:  I have been drawing since I was really a child, maybe 5 years old, I don’t remember. In preschool I can remember drawing little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, and putting the line of the ground just over the feet of the characters. People said, oh but they have her feet under the ground, I said no, it’s in the background, that’s perspective you know.

I never took an art class till I was 18. I started studying graphic design in University [Elisava School of Design in Barcelona]. I spent lots of time as a teenager just drawing comics. I wanted to be a comic book artist, then I started just doing graphic design. I thought it was really hard to make the money to live in comic books. But then in the third year of University, I realized that what I most enjoyed was doing my own stuff, just drawing and making very visual, impacting work—also I don’t want to remain only in the computer, I like the textures that the old techniques can give me. Just dropping paint, just making some crazy movement with the hand.

Cheree: Did your parents want you to study art?

Ivan: Maybe my father wanted me to do some kind of engineering stuff, and some teachers also told me to do architecture and engineering because I was good at mathematics, but I said, I really want to do art, so they agreed. And they saw I enjoyed it, so they trusted it.

At the same time I started at university, I started working at my friend’s parents graphic design company, so I started to learn very quickly. It’s kind of lucky because at University I got some commissions because of opportunities that professors passed my way. I did a book, Barcelona Nights, I really enjoyed—that book was maybe three months, so that was collaborating on the graphic design and doing the illustrations. I was very involved with the whole book. When we were ending college, five of my friends and I created a small graphic design company and we were working together in some projects. I’ve been always involved with this group or some other group. I was in a crazy group doing video projects, I was with a serious group doing graphic design projects. And I was on my own, doing my own things.

 Cheree: What are your favorite graphic novels?

Ivan: I enjoyed Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, not only for the stories but for these crazy drawings of lines and big shadows and the geometrical way of drawing characters and faces. Also Frank Miller is great, also because of the shadows and how he is able to do these really strong figures. Darwyne Cooke is really crazy—someone told me about him, a really great discovery, the way he describes an action—you need to be very involved in the art to really get the details of the story.

Cheree: Why did you come to America?

Ivan: I finished my studies four maybe five years ago, and I have been just working and doing different things and trying to be more involved in illustration than graphic design. Last year I did a pair of personal exhibitions and I wanted to develop some projects. Some people from a book publishers in Madrid, they told me about the possibility about doing a graphic novel, so I said ok, yeah, I will do it. But time was passing, and I never did it—that was 2 years ago—and I was just doing other things, working, there’s always something urgent—so well, I never had enough time to do this project. So I thought well, I will work, I will save money, I will go somewhere and spend 4 or 5 months and do this project. Also I wanted to be with myself for a few months and develop this two-color technique. I don’t know, I was seduced by this city, the huge metropolis.

Cheree: Were you seduced by the real New York or the comic book concept of New York?

Ivan: Maybe it was the myth of the big city. I was reading those superhero comics since I was a teenager, so I was always viewing these rooftops with water towers and the Brooklyn skyline, I always had that in my brain. And then I talked to some friends in New York, so I was getting more involved, just looking at some photography books, getting into this city bit by bit. I planned the trip for about 8 months before actually coming.

I got here the first of August. I came with a friend, he came for an August holiday, so I also did a kind of holiday the first month. We found a place to stay in Bushwick.

Cheree: What did you do on your August holiday?

Ivan: I opened a bank account, searched for art supply stores, walked around different neighborhoods taking photos, going to the MOMA on Fridays [pay what you wish], going up to the Empire State at night, which was a really powerful view of the city, going to see basketball in the streets, going to some concerts, going to see live jazz to draw the musicians, and cooking a lot. I have been cooking a lot. Yeah, I needed to cook. I never cook at home. Here I wanted to cook for myself and kind of take care of myself.

More on Ivan tomorrow...