The LUCX Project

Meet JULIAN CALLOS : Illustrator : Los Angeles, CA | VISIT THE SITE

Each piece has its own mood that I’m trying to convey. Some are more whimsical, some are a bit more melodramatic, others are humorous. It’s nice to switch it up tonally, but I do find myself exploring certain themes—such as death, nature, uncertainty—over and over again. The main goal that I hope to achieve with any piece is that the viewer can fathom a story out of it. The story in a commercial illustration like an editorial piece has to be clear, but with my personal work, I like to keep things a little more vague so that the viewer can get a sense of what’s going on but still maybe come up with his or her own narrative. I know the stories playing out within my paintings and the meaning behind the gestures or the symbols, but it’s really fun to hear how other people interpret them. Also, I hope I can provoke the same feelings that I’m trying to convey in my work…or even an opposite feeling! I just hope I can elicit some sort of response, whether it’s a thought, an emotion, a chuckle. Anything. That to me is a successful piece.

Giving your time with LA Weekly, what are your thoughts about the decline in print vs. the rise of digital?

I think illustrators are really malleable as far as the types of jobs they can do or where their work appears (a lot of illustrators are showing in galleries, for example), so I think there will always be an outlet for illustrations that would have normally been in print. But it is unfortunate that print is seeing its decline. We should just all start an underground zine movement. Or did that already happen a few years ago? I don’t know. Let’s do it again.

I usually try to make things that reflect what I enjoy and let those works represent me and my art so that hopefully I get jobs that are related to those interests. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a start. Even though finding one’s artistic voice can be a long journey and requires a lot of time and patience to really figure things out, it’s definitely more helpful to consider it a learning experience rather than a struggle. I’m always learning new things about the media that I use all the time, and I love experimenting with new media every now and then, so I don’t know if I can say that I’m steering my work in a particular direction. It may actually be the other way around.

I’d never really seriously considered doing sculpture until I got an opportunity to experiment with it a couple years ago. When I realized how exciting it is to see your 2D drawings translated to 3D, I fell in love. So I make a sculpture every once in a while, usually when I think a particular idea would just be way more interesting in 3D. It’s fun to do sculptures for gallery shows because then people actually have a chance to look at them in person, walk around them, and see all the little details rather than just look at pictures of them online.

I would love the opportunity to explore different avenues of art and illustration—character design, book covers, comics, posters, more freelance editorial stuff—and add a lot more variety to my portfolio. So hopefully in the future I’m trying something new!