Meet Alfonso De Anda

Gather round kids we’ve got a visual storyteller for your eyeballs. Illustrator extraordinaire and former New Yorker, Alfonso de Anda creates graphic work influenced by his skateboard background. Now based in Mexico City, this artist makes whimsical and vivid line work that will stop you in your tracks. They also have a really neat online self-publishing class that you can check out here.

Below we discuss dinosaurs, New York’s creative community, and the narrative threads running through his work.

A self-portrait by Alfonso De Anda

Would you rather…

Would you rather have a perfect photographic memory, or be able to see up to one day into the future?

Hands down photographic memory. I think seeing a day into the future would make life so much more complicated, lots of decision making added to the game. Yeah, no hahahaha. Photographic memory on the other hand, super useful in a personal and practical way. Never forgetting where I left my keys, drawing references, nice memories, having to see google maps just once to know where I’m going, benefits are endless.

Some questions with Alfonso

What is your favorite dinosaur? Why is it your favorite?

It has taken me a minute since I haven’t thought of this in a long time but I think Brachiosaurus are pretty cool. They seem pretty chill based on that Jurassic Park scene.

What is the creative community like in NYC for an artist doing illustration?

It was pretty cool in my experience. I lived in NY for about 3 years (doing a Masters degree and then just freelancing), then I moved to Mexico City in May 2019; the high overhead of NY was making me feel sorta trapped. But there’s lots of really cool work being done up there and lots of nice resources.

I think its a pretty supportive community because everybody knows the hustle that it takes to economically stay afloat; I made a bunch of friends that I really appreciate and miss. All this being said, I think there is some sort of “system” or “protocol” floating around over there of what is needed to be part of the illustration game. I’m talking about the competition and annual illustration publications put together by different organizations and it goes sort of like this: You pay to enter the competition, if you get selected you have to pay more to get printed in a book, then you also have to pay to have your piece hung at a show and, to top it off, you have to buy the book (which has your work in it ) if you wanna own it.

Supposedly, lots of art directors see these publications and I do understand they are a good opportunity to spread your work, but these things are put together by illustration organizations and the financial cost of what it takes to be playing that game, as an artist, to me seems greedy from their part. I have mixed feelings about these things and, now that I see it from a distance it makes less and less sense to me to take part of that game.

Sorry for the rant hahahaha, the beef is with organizations which I guess are part of the community, but the humans in the community are awesome and I miss a bunch of them.

How do you preserve your aesthetic and vision when creating for a larger brand like Google?

This is actually not an issue because clients reach out to me because they are interested in my work which involves both aesthetic and vision. Of course there’s a bit of back and forth with the art director but after getting a sense of what they are looking for, I approach it like I approach a personal project. Sometimes if I’m feeling some sort of pressure or overwhelm I have to remind myself I got hired to do my thing. 

Most of your pieces follow a certain narrative. What stories do you gravitate towards?

It really varies, but a common denominator of the stories I notice I gravitate towards is that they communicate feelings, regardless of where they fall in the spectrum. I really enjoy slice of life, fun stories though.

What is the best interaction you have ever had with a fan of your work?

Hmmm, I don't think I have one BEST interaction but I really enjoy talking to people. Tabling at comic and zine conventions is great for that. It is really nice to see people's reaction to your work live and in real life. Also, it’s really cool when a stranger tells me they know my work, it is very surreal to me.

Where do you look for inspiration?

Everywhere. I really like and enjoy the triviality of my day to day and I get excited by simple things like looking at dogs or noticing cool color palettes while out on the streets. Things that happen in my personal life also give me content. My imagination is a great source of inspiration too; a lot of my ideas come from just sitting down and drawing without any goal in mind.

What is it like translating your small scale, intimate work to a larger scale like murals?

Doing big murals is something I really enjoy. One thing I try to keep in mind is that just because you have a lot of real state to work with doesn’t mean that you have to saturate it with information. Like, you can have a big big wall with just one big big element. One thing that has been really fun lately is figuring out how to work with different tools for different scales to achieve  cohesive results regardless of the size of the piece. Figuring out how to mimic pencil scratches with a big brush while painting murals for example.

Another thing I really enjoy is noticing how, when painting large scale, the movements come from my elbow and shoulder, as opposed to fingers and wrist when working at a smaller scale.

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)

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