Interview: Pablo Larah Social Media and Illustrative Expert

Today for our Nenuno Creative community readers we bring a highly anticipated interview on our part, we have long been a great admirer of many in the creative community. Today we bring you an interview with Pablo Larah, a social media expert (especially on Twitter) and brilliant illustrative artist.

We were able to sit down and exchange emails with this great mind of the creative community and we hope you appreciate his responses and the effort and time which went into making this interview possible.

We hope to have more interviews and features in the future, if you want to be involved then drop us a message or get in touch!

1. Thanks for agreeing to this interview with the Nenuno creative community Pablo, would you please introduce yourself to our readers and community.

My name is Pablo Lara Henriquez, but in the web I am “pablolarah”and I am currently based in Santiago de Chile.

Who am I today?

I am a self-taught illustrator and a graduated Bachelor in Social Sciences.

I studied Law (yes, I could have been an attorney) and in the fifth year of my career I decided to quit everything and I went  (cough-scape-cough) to live in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, a South American and tropical country in the middle of the world, literally. Then I went to live and travel through Spain, from the cold Bilbao to the warm Murcia. In Madrid I participate in a website with a virtual exhibition of the pictures I took in Murcia, from which I had a copy in my own site, named The things Rahel saw in the road from Ayemenem to Cochin.

So, I became a illustrator naturally.

In 1984, I won the third place in a contest of painting in the 39th Anniversary of UN (United Nations). But since I can remember I have been drawing and sculpting and writing and all kind of art-related things.

2. You have written for several sites across the web, how did these relationships come about?

I am a natural born socialite, which you must put in the context of internet. In the real life I spend the whole day reading at internet and I have a small group of friends I visit often. I am not a real life socialite!

My experience for Colorburned.com came about when I wrote to Grant Friedman and I asked for the chance to write an article. I wrote two articles there, and built up a relationship of trust to write for him. My other experiences are very similar and in other cases, people have written e-mails asking me to write for them from which I was happy to do so.

The Internet is about cooperation.

3. We know you are a writer as well, do you keep a journal and what do you like writing about?

My blog is a mirror of what I am writing. At the beginning I had the strong and unbreakable purpose to write about my own things, but finally I just have the time to re-post the articles I have written for other people. Sometimes I write about things like my own presence in Internet. But this is not common.

4. Did you have a personal motivation to write for these websites?

My personal motivation is the knowledge. I have been always fascinated for knowing everything I can. From science to Internet, from writing to illustration. That is why I made the series of articles about the brief history of illustration.  At the other hand, posting in a blog means the effort to get the people know you and know your work, as well a the exposure that it creates.

5. You are known for being a keen social networker, with a huge following and respect on Twitter. What do you find the most rewarding when social networking?

Again my sin: knowledge. I am networking for the hunger of knowledge.

But I have learned to know the people and show a lot of respect for them. I think the social networks are a chance to develop your spirit values, as the generosity and mercy. Or they can be a way to show some respect for the humanity. In fact, I think every act even the simplest act, is a chance to learn something.

6. Who do you find to be the best people on your social networks (Such as twitter?)

The best people are the people who take the time out to say “hi” once in a while, the people who treat one another as human beings. I am not looking to follow the great people who has a lot of followers. I do prefer human interaction instead of robots.

7. Where would we all find you across the web? social networks? personal site?

Find my personal website http://pablolarah.cl/

Follow me on Twitter @Pablolarah

My blogs in Blogger http://pablolarah.blogspot.com/ and Posterous http://pablolarah.posterous.com/

Tumblr http://pablolarah.tumblr.com/

Behance http://www.behance.net/pablolarah

Carbonmade http://pablolarah.carbonmade.com/

8. Where do you get inspiration for your photography?

I think the examples are the best way to show what are you doing.

The things Rahel saw in the road from Ayemenem to Cochin is my example. This series of photographs were inspired by Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, a book I strongly recommend. I was so shocked with all the images that caused the book in me, that I had to do something with them. I took the camera of my Brazilian friend and I shot all the dead animals in the road from Santomera to Alquerías, two tiny towns of Murcia, in the south of Spain. The impulses to do things came in my life mostly from books.

9. How did you develop your style for illustration?

My style for illustration came – I think – from an old book that my grandpa had at his house. The book was Tales from Andersen. I remembered the images with a handful of colors and it provoked in me the anxiety for expressing with my hands, drawing.

I am an art lover. I admire a lot of artist, from Da Vinci to Picasso, from Daumier to Dmitry Ligay. But saying a name is unfair. I admire a lot of people.

Finally in order of the process of my work I can say I have some stages to develop an illustration:

• Sketching:this step is basic for me. Usually the sketch ends up as the final art, but I have discovered that is very useful to brainstorm and it makes easier the drawing process.
• Coloring: I use usually watercolor and then I put some layers of colored pencils
• Scanning
• Photoshop processing: This is a very important step in some of my works, because sometimes I made illustrations I called puzzles.I made every part of the illustration in different physical pages and then I scan them and I put them all together in Photoshop. Like a puzzle. I applied there some textures and sometimes even some colors

Big Thank you to Pablo for taking his time out in making this interview possible!