Carlos Vélez

Carlos Vélez

Carlos Vélez Aguilera grew up between drawing and comics and for more than 9 years has been dedicated to editorial illustration. For him, the profession of illustrating means, literally and philosophically, to fill with light, illuminate a text or make a story with images, shapes and colors. His work, mainly devoted to children's literature, has been published by some of the most important publishers of children's and youth literature such as Alfaguara, Santillana, Ediciones Castillo, Editorial SM, among others. Carlos Vélez was trained in the National School of Plastic Arts of the UNAM, and has specialized with great masters of illustration as Javier Sáez, Kveta Pacovska and Santiago Caruso. The illustrations of Carlos Vélez are a mixture of word and image almost always focused on education. His work has a strong metaphorical content and is characterized by the constant use of symbolism, each stroke has a reason for being; also the application of color implies a meaning in Vélez's illustrations. In addition, his images have a lot of movement and one of the challenges that the artist has posed to himself is to graphically express emotions and other art forms such as music or dance. A more representative example is his opera prima Destino Hall, which compiles all the style elements of the illustrator, where aesthetics and the importance of silence and understanding the world without the need for words, play the main role. Recently, Carlos Vélez has dedicated himself to the creation of graphic stories after being a beneficiary of a creation grant from FONCA. However, he has collaborated in editorial projects with writers, which he has considered an opportunity to understand the imaginary of others and reinterpret it in order to enable the contemplation of the text. For "a remarkable wealth of meanings and powerful metaphorical elaboration, as well as an inexhaustible wealth of details and symbols that show a great originality in the construction of characters and universes", Carlos Vélez Aguilera received second place in the Catalog of Illustrators of Children's Publications and Juveniles in the 2016 edition of the FILIJ for his work Caminando por la calle Epicuro. In 2011 he won the third place in the same contest and in June 2016 he participated in the workshop Illustrated the city of Carlos, during the Tribute to three years without time limit, dedicated to Carlos Monsiváis in the Museo del Estanquillo.