This Is How We Perceive Our World
Written by Estudio Santa Rita
For us, illustration is a way to understand everything around us, what we see every day, and the way we perceive the world. Illustration is a form of expression; whenever it shows up at your doorstep (knock, knock), you should greet it with enthusiasm and dedication.
We have been illustrating, painting, and creating since childhood. Let’s say that creativity knocked on our door at an early age, and we have been lucky to go on a long journey of research and experimentation until we found what we wanted.
We also consider that discovering one’s “own style” (which can prove frustrating for those starting) is something that ends up finding you one way or another. When it does, you realize it’s the result and mixture of years of visual culture, references that you love, cultural currents, music and photography you are passionate about, TV shows that have shaped you, your family… In conclusion, we channel our acquired culture through illustration, making it a pure form of expression that sums up a style.
Style is also evolution. It doesn’t mean that we should be faithful for life to it or get caught up in the same way of work forever. Fortunately, nowadays we have the opportunity to choose and try new tools that make our work easier and more versatile, while allowing us to fuse our styles in a fresh, dynamic way.
The way we work is based on three key principles that we would like to explain through a metaphor of the human body, since figuration is always somehow present in our illustrations.
Skeleton, muscle, and skin.
1. We always start from the inside out when creating, making the idea and core concept the skeleton upon which everything develops. This might be the most complex part of the creative process of any project, and it’s where we pay special attention so that the final message is clear and provokes a specific dialogue.
Something that used to help us at the beginning was to work on personal projects (which we continue doing today in our spare time) where we shaped ideas using the creative process that the surrealist artists developed in 1925. They named it “Exquisite corpse”, based on the old parlor game called “Consequences”, where the players would take turns to write the first thing that came to their mind on the same piece of paper, folding it up so the next person wouldn’t see what the previous player wrote. At the end of the game, the surrealist story created by everyone would be read out loud. This method inspired us to illustrate different scenes and exercise our imagination freely.
2. Now that we’ve talked about the structure, it’s time to coat the skeleton with muscle, which provides shape and volume. This is where we take the idea and give it form, generating all the necessary elements which participate in the mathematical equation of our creation.
In this sketching phase, we define many of the structural aspects based on shape and composition. In order to do so, it is crucial to rely on the principles of balance, study the weight of the different elements involved, and make sure everything is placed harmoniously. Furthermore, we need to ensure the core idea is being communicated successfully.
This is where we can unleash our creativity and shape the composition however we want it, and also where the personality and character of our creation comes into its own.
3. Finally, what surrounds our body is the skin. It is the culmination of our work and an essential part of every project: color. Color is what gives any illustration its identity, and it’s one of the hallmarks of our work: always bright, flat, and what allows us to create volumes.
We have a flaw — or perhaps a virtue — but we love to constantly study the volume of things. When we look at our friends, we pay attention to details which might make other people think we’re crazy, but we can’t help it! We love to closely observe their features, how the light falls on them, the volumes generated by their bone structure, and we imagine how we would illustrate them and how we would divide the different light and color planes when doing so. This is yet another observation exercise that we do on a daily basis without realizing it.
We must say that, for us, these words are reflections of what we consider helpful for the process of our work, and we would love for them to be useful to others. There are no higher truths, only experiences that add up to a creative evolution.
In any case, create, learn, take visual references from those artists that inspire you. Feel free to create — but never copy — and always follow your own instinct.
About Estudio Santa Rita:
Estudio Santa Rita is the creation of illustrators and designers Palo and Nuel based in south of Spain, Málaga. They implement into both their creative processes and aesthetic in their projects, channeling their admiration for the Pop movement and Surrealism, experimenting into their creations. They are always looking for new concepts, new bright colors. They have collaborated with clients ranging from start-ups to Magazines and advertising agencies.
