Cosplayers queue for free mind-portraits as Fuengirola artist packs Comic-Con Malaga floor

San Diego Comic-Con Malaga has spent four days at FYCMA with Hollywood on Hall M. Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Karl Urban and a Starship Troopers reunion took the cameras. Off that stage, Costa del Sol charity AFESOL put Fuengirola painter David Pascual Arroyo in front of the people who were actually there for the art.

Costa del Sol talent on the convention floor

AFESOL, the association for people with mental illness and their families, got a stall at this year’s convention and used it to pitch Pascual Arroyo in a room usually reserved for the biggest comic-book names. His offer was not a print table. He worked live, in a method he calls Retratos Robot Psycho Analogicos.

Police sketch artists build a face from a witness and a few hard details. Pascual Arroyo works close to that method, and more, only the brief covers psychological temperament as well as bone structure. Rapid strokes from several coloured pens lock a likeness visitors said they recognised at once, spare and stretched in a way that nods to Giacometti. He had already trialled the method at exhibition openings, including the Torremolinos town hall show in late 2024. On this occasion he gave the portraits away.

Cosplayers stayed while the press moved on

Queues of cosplayers in bizarre, quirky costumes turned the stall into its own little theatre. Pascual Arroyo called that crowd “something magical”. Press packs rushed from one star table to the next. Badge-holders stayed, waiting for a sketch they could carry out of FYCMA.

Readers who know his earlier canvases will see the same habit in a louder room. Dark pictures gave way to brighter colour after years of using paint as therapy for bipolar type 1, a diagnosis he has carried since 2001. Comic-Con Malaga put that practice in a hall built for capes and photo ops.

A local cause in a 300-hour programme

Organisers billed more than 90 booths in Artists’ Alley and a programme past 300 hours, running 1 to 4 October at the Palacio de Ferias y Congresos. Poster space went to imported names from hollywood, while this stall did its job with one from Fuengirola.

AFESOL’s point was plain. Art made on the coast can sit in the same hall as flown-in fame, and a free portrait can open a conversation about mental health that a panel often cannot.