Below you can read his feedback. Enjoy!
And... Grazie mille Manu!
Manu Gutiérrez: Drawing Alan Moore was not a whim. It arose from a commission to illustrate Roberto Bartual's book Occulture. Alan Moore: al otro lado del velo (Occulture. Alan Moore: Beyond the Veil) (Ediciones Marmotilla, 2024).
It is an essay that discusses psychogeography, psychedelia, magic, spiritualism, and Lovecraftian themes in the work of Alan Moore.
It was quite a challenge, which I failed at conceptually because in my first sketches I tried to detach myself from Moore's iconic force, but I didn't succeed.
In the initial designs, I sought more of the occultist implication of the book and rambled on with icons from the spiritual universe. The compositions worked, but they didn't quite speak to Moore's figure. So, after quite a few attempts, I went back to the beginning and let myself be carried away by the Magician's gaze. That, combined with his characteristic beard, was too powerful to ignore its pop symbolism. And from there, I took it to my own territory of black on black and layers of textures to infinity. Finally, I added several basic occultist elements to make the meaning of Bartual's essay clear.
