El Noble — The good side of adversities
“Always, when I was drawing I felt really comfortable is like a state of meditation that I got in. When I’m drawing I don’t care at all to work until 4 or 5 in the morning.”
I must say I felt proud when I did this interview since El Noble was one of my students when I was teaching illustration in Colombia a few years ago. I want to clarify that I don’t feel he is succeeding because of my teaching, but I feel somehow I gave him a little push in a moment he might need it the most. Let’s just say that the things aligned at the right time. I perceived his will since I met him and I knew he was going to do fine, not just because of the quality of his work but also how centered he was despite how blurry the horizon line looked at that time.
His life might be an example for many and that is why in this case we will not put the usual format of The Migratory with questions and answers, instead we have his history. His success was made from adversities. However, this adversities were took more like a challenges that reflected how much he wanted to be what he is today.
Ricardo Nunez
My name is El Noble. I am from Bogota. I’m Illustrator and I work doing tattoos.
Once I finished high school, I said to my dad that I wanted to become an artist, he immediately discharged the idea telling me that he had already enrolled me to study Topographic engineering. In the third term I made the decision of dropped my studies. It was a lot of trouble at home because my family had other expectations about my life, however I wasn’t happy so I made the choice to dedicate myself to drawing.
Because I wasn’t studying I had to work doing many different things. I clean toilets, I sold food, shoes I worked in a cellar… I worked because I needed the money and I needed to buy materials to draw, to paint.
After that, I decided I had to studied again. I tried to pass in public universities but I didn’t I didn’t have the money to pay a private university either. I kept drawing but I realized that I needed somehow some academic knowledge I studied in a free public institution. I studied Prepress so I became a pressman so I kept drawing but still I wasn’t working in any related with illustration or art.
After a while, I quit my work as a printer and I studied again in the same institution but this time I did Design, however the studies focused on mechanical work. In the the academic part, we didn’t have the freedom to develop skills but rather to do a premeditated task. So I realized as well that that wasn’t what I wanted to do.
Fortunately, when I was studying Design, I met a teacher, the only teacher I ever had that has taught me illustration. I felt lucky that in a place that teaches mechanical things, I had the chance to learn something that I liked it.Unfortunately, he had to leave, but I felt motivated to keep working on my drawings.
My biggest influence is Albrecht Dürer. He was an incredible art producer that was able to break paradigms of the time he belonged to.
When I finished studying Design, I was doing my internship and in the company they told me they wanted to hired me full time. Nonetheless, I didn’t accepted because I had decided I wanted to do tattoos. I found tattooing incredibly captivating the idea of transform something that is on a piece of paper and put it on a skin is awesome.
Tattooing is not easy and I think my style has room to evolve continuously. I might be doing my work in a certain way right now and surely my essence won’t disappear in the future but I’m also sure that my style will suffer a transformation.
If you really want to do something just go and do it. Many times you feel limitations such as work, money or the pressure of your family but if you want to make your dreams come true you have to make the decision of make it true and you have to be radical about it.
More about El Noble in Patreon
Favorites of El Noble
Animal: Crane
Música: All but Pop
Comida: Sauteed vegetables
Película: Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
Written by: Ricardo Nunez Suarez
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