This is the second part of my interview with Ivan Bravo. I posted the first part yesterday.

Cheree: Now that your August holiday is over…

Ivan: I’m spending a lot of time at home, working, washing clothes, watching movies. We have a projector so we watch movies on the white wall. I like the apartment—really big, high ceilings, lots of space.

I wanted also to live in these kind of places [industrial neighborhoods] when I knew I was coming here. My friend who was living here told me there were lots of artist in Brooklyn—there were lots of funny people doing crazy things in Bushwick and Williamsburg. He was living in an artist loft shared with lots of people, he told me how when he comes home sometimes his roommate will be playing the accordion, with another one dancing around—so it was influenced by the myth of the big city and also the prospect of being involved with crazy artistic people.

Cheree: Has the creative people part come true?

Ivan: In some ways. I’ve met a bike mechanic, my other roommate is a drummer and he paints also, so the place is full of his paintings, and they appreciate when I show them what I’m working on. And I’m finally starting to make friends. When I arrived here the first week, when I went to the art supply store, I was just getting a lot of fliers to see what was going on here. And I discovered Factory Fresh, which was one minute from my home. That [the Brooklyn Bailout Burlesque] was the kind of Friday I expected to find here. That was crazy because of the concert and the ambiance, and somebody told me that New York was full of cold people, and some other people told me that New York was full of easy going, easy talking people, so yeah, I was just very motivated just to talk with some strangers. I was a complete stranger there.

 Cheree: So Factory Fresh was everything you expected, but not every Friday was Factory Fresh?

Ivan: Some other Friday was a moonlight bike ride, 25 miles through Central Park and Manhattan. We were 100 people riding bikes—I didn’t expect that [monthly Critical Mass ride].

 Cheree: How long do you plan to stay here?

Ivan: Only till the end of October. I pretended I would do all the stuff here, but yeah, maybe I’m kind of a collector of images here and collecting the sketches, maybe if I come back home with ten great illustrations, it will be enough for me. But if I can do 20 or 30, it will be really great, the work will be nearly finished.

Cheree: What’s the premise of this graphic novel?

Ivan: I like when images have something just in the background, I like when images have something hidden, like a cryptogram or hieroglyphics.  So I want to do a graphic novel full of clichés from noir cinema, full of gangsters and a very big metropolis and something sci-fi with lobsters, and some crazy scientists in Frankenstein’s laboratory. The setting will be more or less the 1930’s and 40’s. I like the myth of gangsters, the way they dress, the hats, the guns hidden in the music cases—these kinds of things. There won’t really be a narrative, lots of vignettes—powerful images that are not directly related, but at the end you can mix everything and make your own story with all of this material. Maybe some main character is just lurking in the background of some panels, seemingly for no reason. I want to put lots of little details.

Cheree: So what are your cinematic influences?

Ivan: Tarantino movies like Pulp Fiction, because the little stories are at last all related and he has great camera angles. El Padrino [The Godfather] because of the gangsters. I think I should see some Bogart films also. I’ve bought some books that show some of these old movies. I’ve seen Paul Newman in The Hustler. He plays pool, he doesn’t have any place to live, just keeps his suitcase in the train station. The pool is something I need to show.

Cheree: How do you feel about street art?

Ivan: I’ve always appreciated street art and graffiti paint, but I’ve never done graffiti. The last big work I did was a mural in a restaurant in Barcelona, but I did it just with brushes and acrylics.  I’m sure New York has more street art because its bigger and has more graffiti history, but yeah, graffiti is going up in Barcelona.

Cheree: What, you don’t want to get arrested?

Ivan: Yeah, and I want the drawing to be alive for a long time, which is maybe not for graffiti cultures.

Cheree: What materials do you use?

Ivan: Waterbased wash. Here in New York I have some troubles to find it. In Barcelona it’s very easy. The density is high, you can’t see through it—you can paint blue over black, and you only need to do it twice. I started to do this drawing with acrylic, but I didn’t like the transparency of acrylic. I’m preparing myself to develop this [two-tone] technique for silkscreen printing. The way I’m working now is kind of silkscreening by brushes, because I’m doing all of the first color and then going to the second color. I want to do t-shirts.

I see illustration as a way of putting drawings everywhere—you can do sofas, chairs, mobiles, not only in books, in a traditional way. I think it’s because I’ve studied graphic design so I think in terms of printing more, in terms of tints more than in terms of color. But I want to do also huge oil painting pictures.

I’m part of group show in Barcelona next spring [at Esther Montoriol] and we want to do some jazz stuff, we want to paint about jazz. I have been interested in different techniques, so maybe I will do oil paintings for that shows. I like a lot of printing techniques—silkscreen, linoleum. So now is the time of oil, I’ve been dreaming of that.

 Cheree: And who are your favorite jazz musicians?

Ivan: Miles Davis is one of them. Electric Miles is one of my favorite records. Something about John Coltrane is really incredible. I usually prefer blues than crazy jazz, you know when there’s so much activity, its oh, be careful with it--there’s too much to listen to it all, and you just feel that its enough.

Cheree: Do you think your oil paintings will still be geometric and graphic?

Ivan: Yeah, sure. I’m kind of obsessive in that way. Maybe I will put some extra colors.