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INPRIMATU
Antton Olariaga
"I've stained the texts with images, now it's up to the reader to keep getting dirty."
Garazi Zabaleta 2019ko urriaren 23a
Antton Olariaga. Argazkia: Dani Blanco.
Antton Olariaga. Argazkia: Dani Blanco.

One more year with your drawings you have completed the book of the LandarLantzen agenda. Have you taken the taste of drawing plants, no?

Yes. Until now I saw the plants from afar, I appreciated them, I even ate some, more and more with them in the kitchen… I am not horticultural, but it is true that I was curious in the garden. So, I love working with Jakoba Errekondo, I'm learning from him and it's enriching to add my readings to what he told me, through drawing.

This year you have new guests in the book…

Trees are the guests we brought to our pages this year, yes. The trees have always seemed beautiful to me, and what to say when they form a forest! They give us shade and fruits… I have tasted.

Has it been new for you to draw trees?

Well, I've always included them in my illustrations, especially as a landscape. In children’s and youth literature, for example, the presence of the forest, of the mountain, of nature… And I, always and a half unconsciously, talk about nature and put a tree there. But of course, without being an identity: without knowing which tree it is, they were abstract trees. Other times I also intentionally drew, for example, I've always liked to draw the beech because of the possibilities that graphic language offers. Therefore, I have already had to do with the trees, but not so typified and so linked to the personality of each of them.

What has the drawing process been like? Have you spent a lot of time looking at the trees?

First of all, I've approached the trees: I've asked Errekondo for visual aids, because that helps. Next, I've done a reading or an interpretation of it: I avoid making a perfect copy, because for that we have photos. Therefore, I have done that interpretation, but without betraying the nature of the trees, preserving the minimum fidelity. We work together, and I always look for Jakoba's contrast when drawing. It should also be pointed out that this agenda is to make it dirty. I have stained the book texts with my drawings and it is now up to the buyer to complete them with their notes and schemes. We're a tripod. On the one hand there is Jakoba, I follow his work and the reader is the third leg.