3 Questions With… Juan E. Zambrano
Juan is a Venezuelan artist who’s work popped up on my Instagram feed at some point. I was immediately charmed by his stylish cartoons of birds and tropical wildlife. When he posted about his upcoming graphic novel about a 10-year-old boy who wants to learn magic from a hermit mountain witch, I was immediately sold.
Pacheco and the Witch of the Mountain came out last month and it’s every bit as charming as I hoped it would be. Forbidden magic, caste systems, and magical creatures, what more could you want?
Check out our interview below, then go check out his work!
What is your favorite part/step of the process?
It’s definitely sketching! When I first start working on thumbnails, it feels like possibilities are endless. Drawing doesn’t necessarily have to be about making things exactly as you first imagined them, it’s also about trial and error and discovering new things about those ideas and looking at them from a different perspective, if that makes sense! So testing out different layouts or trying different expressions and character poses is a really exciting part of the process for me. Maybe that’s why coloring would be my second favorite step! Figuring out color palettes can be a challenge for sure, but it’s also really fun.
What has (pleasantly) surprised you about creating comics that you didn’t anticipate when you first started out?
Working on Pacheco was very intimidating at first. I never worked on a project this big before, and if I wanted to do a good job, there were a lot of things that I would have to figure out and learn from scratch as I went along. But it turns out I had a lot of fun learning those things! Even the most technical aspects like figuring out layouts to fit page sizes and colors for print was really interesting to me and made me excited to think about future projects.
What are you currently working on?
I recently moved to a different city where there are tons of cons and art fairs, so I’ve been starting to focus on tabling, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now! Simultaneously, I’m working on my next graphic novel, and although I can’t really talk a lot about it right now, I’m very excited about this project and what’s to come!
Find Juan online at:
His Website
