Ciruelo Cabral was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His formal art training was limited to a few courses in drawing and advertising design, after which, at the age of eighteen, he immediately found work in an ad agency as an illustrator.
At twenty-one, he became a freelance illustrator and started a career as a fantasy artist.
In 1987, Ciruelo traveled to Europe and settled in Sitges near Barcelona, Spain. He then embarked on a search for publishers for his “worlds of fantasy,” eventually finding them in Spain, England, the United States and Germany, reaching an international audience.
His US clients include George Lucas, for whom he illustrated the book covers of the trilogy Chronicles of the Shadow War.
Ciruelo illustrated the cover for the tenth anniversary’s edition of the book Eragon, by Christopher Paolini and, in 2016, did over forty ink drawings for The Official Eragon Coloring Book. He also created a number of album covers including Steve Vai’s The 7th Song and The Elusive Light and Sound, and Adam & Eve for the Swedish rock band, The Flower Kings. He collaborated with Alejandro Jodorowsky on a comic story published in France and in the US. Other clients include Wizards of the Coast, TSR, Berkley, Tor, Warner, Ballantine, Heavy Metal magazine, Playboy magazine, etc.
Another branch of Ciruelo’s art is petropictos, the art of painting on stone. He created this technique in 1995. It consists of painting on stones where he is able to discover three-dimensional images and create something halfway between a painting and a sculpture. The work captures the public’s attention in international exhibitions.
At the beginning of 2017 he was invited to the judges’ panel for the Illustrators of the Future Contest.