Artist Profile | Cartoon & Caricature

Nelson Santos

He was born in Salvaterra de Magos on July 26, 1974 - the year of the revolution -. From an early age, he showed some design skills which led him to pull his ears drawing with his left hand and already in school, where he perhaps started it all. He ventured to draw some caricatures of the teachers who caused some bad grades. In 1993, upon abandoning his studies as an act of rebellion, he completed five years of voluntary military service in the Navy, quickly realizing that it was exactly what he wanted. His professional initiation began in 1998 when he attended an illustrator advertisement for the animation studio “Magic Toons” belonging to ETIC where he learned to develop tracing and 2D animation techniques as an inker and palette. One day he was invited to do some live cartoons at an event for the "Organics" shampoo brand, to which he even later discovered he was allergic. Things didn't go badly (except for the dermatological part) and he quickly learned to master this difficult art of caricature. Since then he has worked in event, party and wedding animation as a regular professional, both in Portugal and abroad and has already had numerous actions in Germany, in Berlin, Frankfurt, Heidelberg and Dusseldorf at the great World Medical Fair on two occasions. He also developed logos for companies and other commercial establishments, working on various advertising campaigns and promotional and branding images. He has collaborated with some national publications such as the recent publication of “BD Newspapers”, “Inside Journal” and the launch of “Portal Alice”, (which was a pioneer in sending postcards with images), as well as collaboration with town halls, councils parishes and other renowned organizations and companies such as “Toyota”, “Allianz”, “Sanofi-Aventis”, “Samsung”, “BMW” or “Matutano”, to name a few. He also appeared in a milk advertising campaign in which he was an accomplice of the morning cartoonist. He has been invited to exhibit his works individually and collectively. His first exhibition was in the Town Hall Chamber of the city of Penamacor in March 2007, which was followed in June by the Second exhibition in the Old Town of Rodão. He was the winner of the cartoon contest called the 2006 FIFA Stuttgartven Prize with a caricature of the Brazilian player Ronaldinho Gaucho. Since 2006, he has been a member of the National Cartoonists Network (NCN), a non-profit organization with the objective of disseminating the art of cartooning, where he attended the Convention held in Orlando, Florida. At that same convention he received the award for the cartoon book "Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference For Artists" by Mark Simon. In 2007 he participated in a workshop in Osterbeek in Holland and returned with several awards in his luggage such as: Third place for the best cartoon (2 ex-Achaean awards), Second place for the best black and white cartoon and Third place for the best portfolio. The future of Nelson Santos is a project that will be published in a frequently weekly or even daily newspaper, his most recent contact was with the magazine "Futbolista" and the Diario “Semanauto” (the only magazine dedicated to football in Portugal) where he recently began to collaborate with caricatures of soccer players but they are also contacted internationally to illustrate how was the case of the North American magazine "Brandweek" that was published on the cover with a caricature of Gorbachev or the Kiwanis magazine that illustrated a caricature where the well-known presenter appears Jay Leno. Since 2009 he began to frequently collaborate as an illustrator for the weekly “Sun” which continues to this day. We should also highlight some presence in the television program “Contact Sic” in 2008 and 2009 in a tribute to Portugal where various personalities made live caricatures of Carmen Dolores, Marco Paulo, Simón Oliveira, Filipe La Feria, Carlos do Carmo, Rui Costa and the nostalgic António Feio. Nowadays it is very easy to find Nelson Santos drawing in his studio at home or for an event to capture a moment or an expression that makes you smile.