FAQs
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
I try to keep learning new technics and stay up to date with new materials or ways of creating pics. Although i work mainly in traditional mediums like watercolors and hand drawn art done in paper, i plan to also start working in digital illustration, mainly doing some pics in Ipad as that plattform has some great free and almost free illustration software, so i plan to take advantage of that and do some work there. Although i´m not thinking of abandoning my watercolors as i still think traditional medium is a great way of adding character and personality to an illustration and distiguish it from among thousands of digital works floding the market right now. Besides I love watercolor.
- How did you get started doing this type of work?
I´ve always been drawing since i was a kid. When i was 4 years of age, one night in 1974 i remember my father picking me up on his lap at the kitchen table one night and show me how i could draw wells, (you know water wells, rural farm wells, wishing wells), using color pencils. And he tought me to draw them not just in 2d but also with volume. That and little houses. Most kids draw little houses as shapes or 2d lines. Because of what my father tried to taught me back then i always tried to create them with volume in 3d and i was always very aware of space and volume from earlier one, which helped me to develop my drawing skills over the years that went by. Then the series SPACE 1999 came on tv back in 1976 here in Portugal, and from that moment on i was totally captivated to what could be created using drawings. I spent years designing "Eagle" spaceships and moonbases. Then came Star Wars and all that. But what made me really want to work in illustration, was the movie "The Neverending Story" directed by Wolfgang Petersen back in 1983. The first time the fantasy landscape showing the "Ivory Tower" appeared on the screen i knew i had to learn how to create that and since that moment i never stopped trying to learn all about creating landscapes , particulary imaginary ones which today is still my favorite thing to draw. Many years later, after i left the army at 22, i took my portfolio into a software company that at the time back in late 1992 wanted to created the first Portuguese PC Videogame, called "Gambys" and i was hired as a conceptual designer for the whole game which i did for about three years or so, creating the Gamby world, characters, animations, sprites , design you name it. Check my luisperes.net to download the game for free. After that i never stopped creating illustrations for clients wherever i could get them. I worked a lot in software design for more than 15 years or so but i always did illustration in between and now i´ve been doing it fulltime for a couple of years.
- What types of customers have you worked with?
Initially after three years creating the concept work for the videogame Gambys, where i did all the characters, world backgrounds, animations etc, i did a lot of almost anonimous magazine illustrations for all sorts of publications, (sci-fi short stories, etc), did my share of greeting card and poster work design, among generic graphic and webdesign for companies. But now since i went completly fulltime into illustration, i´ve been doing my share of children book illustrations and board game design too. Essentially i think my work is starting to be well known among the so called anonimous clients. Not the big companies (the market is totally saturated with fantastic artists), but among people that want to publish their own books, sometimes a firs children book novel and don´t know how to find an affordable artist. As i also know a bit about the print on demand publishing process and i always help a client publish his book free of charges after he hires me to create the illustrations, many people that i have done illustration work recommend me to their friends and so that´s how it goes really. Also like i told before, i really like to work for the common folks out there. Even if i end up loosing some money as i always try to fit my work around the tight budgets the regular person has. If there´s some meaning behind a project i usually take it.