Wednesday, May 25, 2011

By Alicia Padrón

© copyright Alicia Padrón
Colored pencil

People ask me how I got to be a children’s Illustrator, and the answer is never a short one.

Truth is sometimes, specially in crazy deadline days, I get a glimpse of me as if I were a third person, and I always ask myself, how did I get here? I’m still amazed by that and so grateful.

I always knew I wanted to do something creative. I knew I could never be a lawyer or an accountant. Nothing against lawyers or accountants, they are much needed in this society, just not my thing.

I really need to create something in order to feel alive.

I studied graphic design and that helped me realize I wanted to focus on illustration rather than design. I started illustrating more on my own and that made me realize I didn’t feel pleasure rendering realistic objects or scenes. What was the point of copying something you could very well accomplish with a photograph? It made no sense to me. I wanted to create more.

Until one day I was sitting down on my living room with a huge belly, pregnant with my first baby, and it hit me. I wanted to be a children’s illustrator. That was it. I finally got to where I needed to be. A moment where I could clearly see a finishing line. I just needed to start running towards it.

From that moment on, that thought never left my mind. I knew that is what I wanted to do with my life. Of course once the baby was born, all my focus went to him and then came the second baby and it took me a while to get where I am today. I worked on a sort of a portfolio during all that time which helped me experiment with mediums and styles. More importantly the thought of being a children’s illustrator never left my mind, if only the desire grew stronger with each passing day.

Until one day, I realized my kids had grown to a good age where I could finally go for it. I did and here I am today.

The thing is, life hints you. Life is like a maze full of corridors with different possibilities. We are in it, blindfolded and wondering around. Destiny watches us, it can give us clues along the way but can’t really tell us which path to take. We have to figure it out on our own.

Once we do, the hardest part will be over.

We just have to follow that path to happiness. 🙂

© copyright Alicia Padrón

This post has caused a lot of comments. To see them, click HERE.