In this episode of Magical Mornings, we featured an artist and line specialist, Diego Lucia working as an illustrator and instructor in national and international companies. Diego has developed a system of 10 steps called as The Stairs for students, artists, animators, and illustrators focused on what he called Deep Basics to discover what the next step in their careers is. Through his analytical and philosophical personality and his stamp, he proposes focusing on the fundamental concepts to achieve a solid base and transform the drawing into a message achieved through control, translation and understanding.
Here’s the interview of Diego Lucia with UnitePod.
Q. What motivated you to want to become an artist or an illustrator?
Diego: There were many things. I think everyone start drawing when we are young. You start drawing as a game. But many of us stop drawing when we grow up. But I kept going. Maybe watching Disney movie or other documentaries on Disney Animators made me want to do that. I remember watch professional artist draw and thinking that it would be amazing to be able to draw like that and giving it a life would be amazing. So I think the thing which motivated me to be an artist is the thing I have for Disney and the artist on the street. That really motivated me to keep going and to show people how to do that because I am more of an artist than an illustrator or a draftsman. I see myself as a teacher. I love teaching how to draw. I love to be able to show people how to start their career on drawing and how to enjoy it because; maybe the learning process is kind of frustrating. My idea is to remove that frustration and to get you at a speed and get you ready to do whatever you want in your artistic career.
Q. You have a very distinguishable art style. So can you tell us a bit about how you arrived at it?
Diego: This subject is something I love talking about. For me, I have a whole lecture about style and how to arrive at a certain style. To me styles are created by the things you know and how well you control your hand, how you control your line, how much do you know about drawing, your perspective and the knowledge about the certain subject you are drawing like if you are drawing figure drawing or character design or landscape, whatever you are drawing, you need to know about the subject. For example if you are drawing a property design and you want to design a lump you need to search around and look for references for learning how lumps are build. The more knowledge you have the more control you have and that what creates a style. So to answer your question about what made me arrive to my current style because I don’t believe we have one single style. It is like the more we know the more we learn on style. So how I arrived at my style is my learning from many teachers and looking at many artist. Nowadays Instagram, Pinterest are really great source of information and have things to look forward.
Q. What are your must have art supplies?
Diego: To make a long story short, I always make a joke about supplies because on Instagram on every post I do, there are 4 to 5 comments asking me what I use to draw. To make something clear, I don’t think materials make a different. To answer your question I use soft graphite and smooth newsprint. The reason I use smooth newsprint is because it’s cheap and you can use a lot with just a few bags. It’s not like you are spending a lot of money on one painting. I love soft graphite because it allows you to make different type of lines. That will be the answer to your question and to get back to a little while; I think materials won’t make a change to the way you draw. Drawing is translating things from 3ds to 2d surface. So if you understand how that works or how we translate something and you control your lines then it doesn’t matter what you use to draw. Yes, it make a little bit of difference to the style it looks because it’s going to change. If you draw with soft graphite it’s going to look different than if you draw with a ball point pen, but the concept of the drawing is going to be the same. So for me tools are not a big deal. Nowadays we all draw in I-pad or whatever tools you are using to draw digitally; it’s not that you have to start all over again. You just need to learn how to use these tools and once you gets a hang of it, you can go back to what you do.
Q. If you could step into my shoes for a moment, what would you ask yourself that I haven’t yet?
Diego: I know myself too much to ask me a question. But regarding drawing, I would ask myself that what it would be the first thing to learn. I don’t know if you know that in 2020 I released an article called The Stairs and it is a strange thing because the stairs is based on mementos. I call it there the basics because they go deeper into the world of mementos. Many people jump ahead and learn craft design, concept art, storytelling, painting in Photoshop, rendering but for me all of these comes later in the game. You need to start to learn from the mementos because these are the strong base in which we then keep adding thing on. So If I were you and I have to ask a question I would ask why you care so much about learning from the mentors. It’s actually a lot of teaching for the mentors because you can see the students grow really fast and make a big difference on their drawing. Many students are good at copying like they can see and they can render but the moment they need to draw something out of their head or do a lose sketch of something, they get completely lost. The reason why is because they lack fundamentals.
Q. Do you have any projects that you would like to happen in the future or any projects going on right now?
Diego: Talking about the Stairs, you said any project I would like to happen in the future; well they are kind of happening right now. I have the stairs, which I just said about. In 2021, there are many courses coming from the Stairs. The first one is going to start from 20 February 2021. This is going to be about this fundamentalist going inside the world of fundamentals learning specifically how to draw. I am going to develop these courses and system that is going to let students gain a lot of knowledge about the fundamentals in 6 weeks. I am also giving henro sessions which are one to one sessions where I teach students about the specific fundamental and show them a simple path to go in their journey to get things done faster and more precise.
Q. So finally, what message do you have for our listeners and where can they connect with you online?
Diego: Well, to not contradict myself, my suggestion to all of you listening and took your time to listen to me is learning the fundamentals. It may take you 2 or 3 months to go deeply into the world of fundamentals but once you know the fundamentals everything starts to fall into place and you can enjoy the process of learning different things. Once you know the fundamental then you are figuring out things. It’s no longer being the game of its going to look bad or I don’t know how to draw or I wasn’t born to do these. It’s not like that. You need to learn. There are some simple rules of perspective or overlaps that are going to help you a lot in your journey of learning how to draw. So that’s my advice to you. If you want to learn from me, you can contact me @diluc on Instagram or on my website at www.diegilucia.com.ar. You can contact me there and I would be happy to help.
Finally Diego, thank you so much for being here. It was such a great pleasure. You have been such a great inspiration today. I got to learn so many things from you today so thank you so much once again.
Diego: Thank you so much for reaching out to me and inviting me to UnitePod. It is really cool to hear from artist from different parts of the world. So thank you so much for listening to this. And you need to contact me, go ahead. I answer every single message, sometimes it takes me a little bit of time but I will answer everything you ask me. Thank you so much for having me.
That’s a wrap of another episode of Magical Mornings featuring Diego Lucia who loves to teach and want all the budding artist in the art industry to start from learning the fundamentals because only that can make their basic strong.
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