Illustrator Spotlight: Señor Salme

By John Freeman on April 2, 2022

*Illustration for Lufthansa Exclusive magazine by Señor Salme*

Señor Salme is a freelance illustrator working and living in Málaga, Spain, whose clients include Apple, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wired Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Variety, The Wire, and more.

Despite exhibiting a rather shameless submission to his old Wacom tablet, Señor Salme cultivates a thorough and unrequited love for good brushes and the thick smell of ink.

Personal work by Señor Salme — Personal work

His drawings are influenced by an inconsistent blend of comic books, popular culture, symbolist painters and mythology.

Apart from illustration, he is also fond (though in a somewhat faked way) of Soviet science-fiction films, second-hand books containing handwritten notes by their previous owners, and a musical genre he likes to call nerdie music, which may have little relation with what other people are refering to when using this tag.

• Check out the work of Señor Salme at srsalme.com | Buy prints of his work

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.