Madrid-London-Bologna.

It was a very exciting week. I love to travel even when I've already been in the places I'm visiting before. M. and I flew to London and there we met Anna and Danny. We stayed at their house and spent the weekend walking through London ( I love window-shopping!). I wanted to call some people to meet them, too, but in one weekend you don't have much time. Amanda, Jorge....I promise next time!!

On Monday Anna and I flew to Bologna. We stayed in a nice bed&breakfast with our own kitchen in it!! It was like a second home, very comfy.
It was my first time in the Bologna Children's Book Fair (I always used to go to the Frankfurt Book Fair) and it was like a "familiar" thing, in a good way. Small and with "space" for illustrators. What I found the most interesting was the Illustrators Forum were we saw some conferences by illustrators that I admire like Tony Ross, David McKee, Peter Reynolds,....and I discovered others, like Carl Cneut, Kristien Aertssen, Guido Scarabottolo,...

I saw such beautiful books!!! And you could tell the difference between french, italian, american and english publishers.The artistic look is very different. I also saw very nice books that opened the eternal discussion over if it is really a book for kids or a book for adults who love children books. I don't know the answer yet.
And you could see illustrators with big and small portfolios running from one stand to another. I admire the illustrators who show their portfolios to a publisher in a Fair. I've never been able to do that. I'm not good at selling my work face to face. I'm better mailing and talking by telephone. And it's not because I'm shy....In fact I love to meet people and talking but I just can't talk about my work, I can't find an explanation for an illustration; I just do it. Maybe I should work on this?
Well....the great discovery in this fair were the japanese and taiwanese illustrators like Jimmy Liao, Chih-Yuan Chen, Hitomi Murakami and some others whose names I can't remember now (sorry).
Every year there is a Show of illustrators chosen by a jury. This year they had more than 3.500 applications!!
There was an illustration meeting point for anyone to put their work, a card, or whatever. There were beautiful cards!
And now back at home I'm happy to say that I have two new friends in London and my mind is full of beautiful images created by other minds all around the world.