Artist: Catarina Sobral
Website: catarinasobral.com
Catarina is from Coimbra, Portugal, and is working her way up in illustration. With a background in graphic design, she enrolled on a MFA in Artistic Illustration at the same time her first commissions started to pop up. Her artwork developed into a combination of digital and handmade illustration, mostly worked as collage, looking for a balance between graphic elements and naive drawings. Let´s read from her.
Who?
Catarina Sobral, 27 years old.
What?
I’m an illustrator and picture book maker.
When?
Anytime. I prefer to work later than to wake up early, and usually my evenings are very productive. I rarely work at night but I work most weekends. Sometimes, when doing a book, I can manage to devote all my time to it, but often there are a lot of things happening at the same time: illustration, emails, some graphic design, schools and libraries to visit…
Where?
I work from home and these days I’m splitting my time between Coimbra and Lisbon (Portugal).
Why?
Because I feel happy when I’m illustrating. Because there aren’t many objects more beautiful than picture books, right? (I can’t remember any right now…)
How?
I use a lot of different techniques. With commissioned work I prefer digital collage, because it’s quicker, but in my picture books I always do handmade illustrations (with collage, monotyping, pencil, oil, wax pastels…). Right now I’m finishing a book all made with acetate overlays and acrylic paint. Because each text has its own mood, its own tone, I just can’t repeat a visual language if the story touches me differently. So my work method changes depending on the technique. I always start sketching with pencil, because I find the composition studies very important for illustrating a book, and I usually develop it into a messy illustration with overlapping layers, like a Frankenstein, before doing the final artwork. But the process between these two stages varies a lot.
Find Catarina Sobral here:
Portfolio: catarinasobral.com
Facebook: sobralcatarina