Jason Pastrana (center) with judge and 1991 Illustrator Grand Prize winner Sergey Poyarkov and judge Judith Holman.

           Jason Pastrana was eighteen years old and a senior in the visual arts program at South Miami Senior High when he won the Illustrators’ Contest.  Since that time, he has been applying to some of the top visual arts programs in the nation and has been accepted to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, School of Visual Arts in New York, Maryland Institute College of Art and the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota.  His initial goal is to get a bachelor of fine arts degree followed by a master’s degree in illustration. 

           Jason currently lives in Miami Beach with his family.  He has two baby sisters, ages two and three, a teenage sister named Melissa, an awesome mother and incredibly wonderful stepfather.  In his own words, “I could not ask for a more supportive and loving family, and everything that I am today I owe to them.”

           Jason adds that he has enjoyed working on the illustration piece for this story tremendously. As an aspiring illustrator, he feels the experience pushed him further to explore, research, think and re-think the vast number of design possibilities for a single scene.