Mariscal iPad

Javier Mariscal

01/03/12. (Sala 282)

My friend Gonzo Suárez invited me to a videogames festival to show me how Chico & Rita was made. In Gijon. He gave me a kiss as a reward, he introduced me to his sister Silvia and gave me an iPad as a gift. It was the first iPad I ever had in my life. I looked at it, I touched it and I put it away in my suitcase.

A few months later I found it lying among a pile of books and comics and I wondered what it was doing there.

It was the weekend and I didn’t have any plans. Well, read new comics. I plugged it in and began to see what this kind of giant phone was for. It wasn’t for making phone calls, it was for receiving e-mails. My friend Mario Eskenazi called me and we met in a WiFi bar. We went to the Apple Store and began to download free sketch programmes. I started to draw with my finger and everything was quick, intuitive and easy. I had a kind of adrenalin rush of happiness. You could sketch without staining your fingers and the screen did as it was told. It was cool.

My sons, the twins, came home the following week. Having seen the new device they grabbed hold of it and began to fiddle around with it. Wow, dad it’s an iPad! It’s so cool! There are thousands of games. Games? Yes, look, lets download some from the Apple Store. What’s the password? We’ll only download the ones which are free. Thanks to Alma and Linus, that weekend I discovered that the tablet-PC-message sender and receiver type device had many uses.

I first discovered the Sketch Pad and then Fantastic Brushes. I could sketch with colours quickly in any place, while waiting for the airplane, in a café, while chatting and having a beer with friends. I was beginning to become very fond of the tablet computer. My first Brushes was done on 22nd March 2011 and I haven’t stopped since during seasons.

I was also given a new telephone as a gift, my old cute phone, was wonderful, it was stolen. The new phone was also called an iPhone, it was the little brother. You could make and receive phonecalls, the keypad would appear and disappear. You could take photos, send emails, messages, use Whatsapp, messenger, and then came Facebook which I was too old for. It was September or October 2011 My friend Javi Royo helped me set up an account and a profile with Facebook.

Helena Claverol the photographer sent me thousands of ways of how to take a photo. Instamatic Panoramic, Camera +, Lomo Cross Process, Filterstorm Apps and lots more. I became a photographer of all the useless things I found around me. I would sketch photos. Photos would be sent to me by email and I would sketch them using Brushes and then put them on Facebook, I would invent a new image in 5 minutes and in 10 minutes I would receive 120 I like it tags and 20 downloads.

Wow!

Another day passed and then it was DINK and so when it’s somebody’s birthday, the calendar sends me an alert and I send a little birthday video.

I really wanted to do this exhibition. Chico & Rita and thousands of illustrations have been made using Photoshop and when people ask me to buy the original I give them a print from the Cannon or HP printer in the studio. There’s no original on paper or pencil sketches. They are left a little frustrated. Here today, I have found a printing system on very good quality paper and have printed off some sketches from the telephone or the tablet computer. Everything is instant, quick, fun, everything is wonderfully refreshing and helps you express yourself more easily and above all communicate with much more people.