Veerle's blog

I've been traveling a lot the first 3 months of this year and I like to keep it a bit close to home for a next talented illustrator. In June I will be in Seville but we go to Barcelona now.

My name is Catalina Estrada and was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia, where I graduated with a degree in Graphic Design. In 1999 I moved to Barcelona and earned a degree in Plastic Arts. I work as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer in Barcelona.

Catalina's work is simply breathtaking. Her trademark is the use of symmetrical compositions which add extra balance in her art, together with a very bright, sometimes flashy color palette and swirly elegant decorative forms. Animals and flowers are her favorite subjects and she draws them with real elegance. She also has a way of making colors glow, just to add this extra fantasy touch to it. I always get sucked into her work. It's pure, it's brilliant.

How long have you been drawing and did it take long to find your personal style?

I was basicly doing lots of graphic design when I finished my studies, however when I started volunteering for the help fundations in Colombia I started doing lots of illustration and liking it more and more, I started developing my own graphic language and this alowded me to get more illustration commissions. I did lots of flyers for Dj's, disco's and bars and this also allowed me to do lot of illustration work. I've always loved drawing and painting and with illustration I sort of found a way to combine both graphic design with art. I've always loved colour, I've always loved emotional images, so I guess I put lots of both emotion and colour into every image I create. Some years ago I started doing some volunteer work for foundations in Colombia helping kids with AIDS and kids in Colombia’s countryside. The illustrations I created for them were sort of the beginning of this style I guess, I tried to put lots of colour, love, hope, lots of light in them so that they would really get people's attention. They worked great so I was really happy with the results. Those were very inspirational projects, and it was sort of the beginning of my illustration career.

Your work has been featured in many exhibitions. Can you tell us a little bit on how that got started and what it means to you?

Once I was that happy with my illustrations for the volunteer works for Colombia I started sending them to different publishing houses, blogs, magazines etc, and tried to get some sort of self promotion by publishing them. Ten they started to get published gradually. Also my web page helped a lot since people could check out the rest of my work there.

Did the Internet influence your work? Has it created new opportunities for you?

Very much, it's been great for me to be able to be updated of what's going on on illustration and to be able to check out all kind of graphic references, it's all right there, from art history to graphic design, illustration, decoration, it's a never endless source of information. Besides this has aloweded me to get in touch with most of my clients, to deliver my work to different countries. I can't imagine my work without internet facilities.

Do you first sketch your illustrations on paper? Can you reveal a bit of your usual technical process? Which applications do you mainly use?

I almost never have time to scketch on paper, so I usually start scketching right away in my computer. I use a wacom tablet (smallest one) and then I start vector scketching in Adobe Illustrator, it's a great help especially regarding color as I can combine all different matches of color until I'm happy with it, also the possibilities of manipulating objects, growing them, placing them differently until I'm happy with the composition...

Is there still something on your wish-list that you would like to accomplish as an illustrator?

I'd love to design and illustrate wallpapers, rugs (interior decoration) also more clothes with my illustrations, maybe to see busses decorated with my illustrations too ;-) I can't stop thinking about all the things I'd like to do with illustration,  maybe to have my own brand, who knows...

Recently Catalina was part of a stunning collaboration with a Brazilian fashion brand called Anunciação. The clothes are decorated with Catalina's drawings and embroidery she designed. The pieces itself are designed by Maria Elvira Crosara and the Art Director for the project was Ana Christina Da Rocha Lima. It must be totally awesome to have your work featured on clothes that are so fashionable.

You can see more detailed images on flickr.

More examples at Catalina's site.