{"id":1702,"date":"2019-06-19T19:50:43","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T19:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eu.shop.wacom.eu\/us\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:21:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:21:52","slug":"ethan-castillos-super-spidey-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/ethan-castillos-super-spidey-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethan Castillo’s Super Spidey Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"Wacom has exhibited at San Diego Comic Con for many years, and we've had the privilege of being located adjacent to Artist's Alley, where we can overlook the booths of artists displaying all the amazing art they have created. One particular artist, Ethan Castillo, caught our eye because of his talent, enthusiasm and youth. Now at the ripe old age of 14, Ethan is still exhibiting at various comic cons and always drops by the Wacom booth to check out what's new. At home, Ethan uses a Wacom Cintiq Pro 16<\/a> <\/strong>and Photoshop to create his personal style of Spiderman fan art.\n\n\"Ethan\n\n \n\nThe following story is excerpted, and slightly modified, from this article originally published by The San Francisco Chronicle in September 2017.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0 The story was written by the Chronicle\u2019s pop culture critic, Peter Hartlaub.\n

Ethan Castillo surrounds himself in Spider-Man.<\/h2>\nThe friendly neighborhood superhero is on the 13-year-old\u2019s T-shirt and in framed comic art drawings on the walls in his room at his South Bay home. And what he doesn\u2019t get from other artists he has learned to make for himself \u2014 professional-looking artwork that fills portfolio books.\n\n\u201cAs a little kid, I don\u2019t know why I liked him. Now, I know it\u2019s probably because he\u2019s the most relatable character to everybody,\u201d Ethan explains. \u201cHe\u2019s every single teenager, having to go through life with problems, trying to figure out who they are.\u201d\n\nEthan is the prodigious extreme. He has been making artwork alongside adults since he was in third grade, and has had a booth in the Artist Alley at both the San Diego and San Francisco Comic Cons.\n\n\"Ethan\n\nBut he reflects a change that seemed impossible even a generation ago. Where parents were burning their children\u2019s comic books in the late 1940s, pursuit of comic art is becoming as accessible for young people as basketball, music or any other extracurricular activity.\n\nJames Sime, owner of Isotope Comics in San Francisco\u2019s Hayes Valley, says that both the market for young adult comics and the opportunities for child artists to create have exploded since he opened his shop in 2001.\n\n\u201cNow it seems like all the kids that come in are working on comics,\u201d says Sime, who maintains a shelf for self-published books by young creators. \u201cI know a transgender (boy), about 11 years old, who is working on a comic about being a transgender 11-year-old, which is mind-blowing. I can\u2019t wait.\u201d\n\nNonprofits, including 826 Valencia and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco and the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, offer comic art programs and mentors for young artists. California College for the Arts in San Francisco offers a master\u2019s degree in comics.\n\n\"Ethan\n\nLisa Brown, author and cartoonist on the 826 Valencia board of directors, is thrilled to see comics gain cultural influence, including gradual acceptance as a literary teaching tool.\n\n\u201cI do think that kids benefit from the structure of comics,\u201d says Brown, who has built an eclectic bibliography of graphic novels on her own and with others, including her husband, Daniel Handler. \u201cI think we have a very visual world, and they\u2019re absorbing a lot of information that\u2019s nonlinear and sequential, and I think that it\u2019s just a really great way to introduce books and reading \u2014 especially for kids who are different learners.\u201d\n\nEthan breaks all of the old stereotypes of the comic book lover as a loner, or an outcast or hooligan. His father, John Castillo, says a kindergarten-age visual learning breakthrough propelled Ethan into a love of art. While visiting a comic book convention at age 8, he asked if he could sit at a table like the professional Marvel and DC Comics artists and show his work.\n\n\u201cI asked, \u2018Can I draw like these people here?\u2019\u201d Ethan remembers. His dad \u201cdidn\u2019t know what to say.\u201d\n\nDuring his first few years, he met some of his favorite artists, including Marvel Comic creative head Joe Quesada, who left a note, \u201cCan\u2019t wait until you work for us,\u201d on Ethan\u2019s website (www.ethancastillo.com).\n\nThe teen engages thoughtfully in conversation, on subjects in and out of comic art. His biggest quirk is the occasional detour into cinematic flourishes \u2014 as he does when asked what advice he\u2019d give to other young creators.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m breaking the fourth wall here,\u201d he says, staring deeper into a video camera. \u201cYou have to love it. For me, I love art \u2014 that\u2019s why I spend so much time drawing. I know this is something I want to do in the future.\u201d\n\nThe public view of comic art has come a long way from 1948 and 1949, when schoolchildren in Binghampton, N.Y., and Spencer, W.Va., were encouraged to burn thousands of comic books in a schoolyard bonfire, and their parents were asked to boycott stores that sold them.\n\nComic history includes many artistic milestones on the way to artistic legitimacy. Brown points to the publication of \u201cMaus,\u201d Art Spiegelman\u2019s graphic novel about the Holocaust that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.\n\nBut the Internet, social media and culture of more intimate sharing may be fueling the most change for young artists.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t need permission from a publisher, or even the work that goes into making a zine on your own,\u201d says Brian Hibbs, who runs a graphic novel club for children from his Comix Experience store on Divisidero Street in San Francisco. \u201cBecause of things like Tumblr, there are whole communities now if you\u2019re an amateur artist and want to put things out there and get feedback.\u201d\n\n\"\"\n\n \n\n \n\nThat feedback is one of the potential pitfalls for young artists, who are vulnerable to discover, before their peers, that the Internet can be a very cruel place. John Castillo and his wife monitor feedback and comments, and don\u2019t reveal Ethan\u2019s school or his city of residence. Ethan has had an Instagram account since he was 9 years old, but still doesn\u2019t have direct access to it.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s a little dodgy,\u201d John Castillo admits. \u201cWe\u2019ve had other artists who say, \u2018Ethan, the content on my social media account is not age appropriate, so I\u2019m going to have to block you. But good luck with your work!\u2019\u201d\n\nAnother reality check for young creators is the relatively slim chances of fame and fortune. As Sime says, \u201cComics are super easy to break into, but it\u2019s super hard to feed a family off of it.\u201d\n\nAs for whether making comics is good for your child in the long run? Comic store owner Hibbs, whose 15-year-old son has been drawing comics since early childhood, doesn\u2019t see any negatives.\n\n\u201cArt is something you make with your head and your heart. What\u2019s the downside of that?\u201d Hibbs says. \u201cI would always say encourage kids to express themselves. It\u2019s a good skill for people to have in their life in general, and a good way for people to get things out that otherwise might consume them. I think it makes better human beings in the long run.\u201d\n\n \n

Learn more about Ethan Castillo\"\"<\/h2>\nWebsite<\/a>\nInstagram<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2332,2318,2317],"tags":[55,237,97,238,239,240],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cintiq-and-cintiq-pro","category-creative-inspiration","category-digital-drawing-painting","tag-artist","tag-comic-con","tag-photoshop","tag-spiderman","tag-wacom-cintiq-pro-16","tag-young-creative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}