The Art of Diego Díaz Palma

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was the one who first put a pencil in my hand and nurtured what would become a lifelong obsession. I never went to art school: everything I know I learned by doing, making mistakes, and doing it again until it worked.

I started at 18 years, when I answered a classified ad looking for an illustrator for the children’s supplement of one of the most important newspapers in Mendoza. I walked in a complete amateur, but over the years I honed my craft until I was designing the main characters for every supplement they published. In 2008 I made the leap internationally through a British agency, which led me to publishers like Macmillan, Stone Arch Books, and Usborne Publishing, illustrating children’s books, comics, and editorial work for clients around the world.

My style blends cartoon energy with cinematic storytelling. I’m obsessed with finding the right angle, the precise pose, the expression that says everything without a single word. I work entirely digitally, though I sometimes incorporate hand-made textures to give my illustrations a tactile, organic quality.

After three decades bringing other people’s stories to life, I’m building my own. Fracta Paradox is a sci-fi graphic novel I’m writing and illustrating entirely on my own. It’s the story I always wanted to tell.