Artist Interview: Pedro Correa

This week, we welcome illustrator Pedro Correa into the Mighty Jaxx family with the release of Hand of Sight! The Brazil based artist has worked with a variety of brands, from the Ford Motor Company to Australian beer brewers Currumbin Valley Brewing. It truly is an honour to bring Pedro's distinct illustrations to life and we can't wait to get Hand of Sight out into the world. Join us below for a special interview with Pedro Correa!

What got you interested in art?

My first experience with art that I can remember is, as a child, doodling in the corners of giant sheets of paper. My father was an engineering student at that time and I stood by him while he did his college exercises after school.

He wasn't good at drawing, but I remember him making a little robot character for me to copy and that kept me entertained for a long time. Every single person liked to draw during some point in their childhood, some more than the others, of course. I think that illustrators and artists just didn't stop doing that.

Who inspired your art while you were growing up?

My best friend in kindergarten inspired me a lot (he was a very good illustrator), our favorite activity was the free drawing class. We drew giant monsters and robots, inspired by the Japanese wave that invaded Brazilian television in the late 1980s with their tokusatsu series.

Over the years my friendships at school changed, but I always had friends around who liked to draw as much as I did, which encouraged me to practice more and more. From the age of 9 I started to be interested in Japanese anime and comic books, mainly the X-men, Wolverine and Spider-Man titles.

What my friends and I did when we went to the newsstands was to choose the stories of our favorite illustrators (at the time we didn't care for good stories, but for good drawings) and spent the afternoons trying to copy them in the best possible way, and we often invented our own comic books.

What sort of mediums do you enjoy working on?

My favorite drawing routine is pencil, ink, scanner, Photoshop / Procreate for coloring and texturing.

I spent my childhood to early 20s using only analog mediums. When I discovered the power of Wacom and design software I put aside traditional methods and dedicated myself only to digital media. Over the years in my professional life I started to balance the two and in my opinion I think this method improves my creation process and the final result really satisfies me.

How would you describe your art style?

My art is in between comic book covers from the past with some kind of surreal psychedelia. I really don't know how to describe it.

Most of my illustrations always end up looking a little bit dark and bizarre. I try to let the ink be the protagonist of my illustrations, covering it with a lot of black areas, I think that contributes to this aspect. I am passionate about drawing skulls but I don't try to bring the impression of death or anything like that, in fact I see a very strong afterlife in my works.

What I try to do most is to place beings in places that are not their own and mix them with objects that are not part of their natural context or habitat. I really like putting animals in space, for example.

Where do you hope for your artistic journey to move on to next?

I am very grateful to earn my living through illustration. It's been such a thrill to be a freelancer (I've been working exclusively with illustration for 5 years) and I discover new work areas everyday. Nowadays I'm focusing on music and television, I think that this is where I'll be in the next few years.

Tell us a little about Hand Of Sight, what inspired its creation?

I don't know if there is anything religious about it, but it seems to me that there is much more out there than we imagined. We see just a little portion of what things are, and this "eye" thing, always present in my illustrations, reminds me of it a lot. We have everything in the palm of our hand, even though we have no idea what this whole picture is.

Let us know...

Favourite food?

Strogonoff

Favourite movie?

I can't think about one movie, but I watched The Land Before Time a thousand times when I was a child, it really brings me good feelings to my mind.

Favourite music album?

Is This It - The Strokes

The piece you're most proud of?

Cosmos Nightmare, it was a real game changer in my life.

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Hand of Sight by Pedro Correa will be available for order from 18 April 2020 at 9am EST on mightyjaxx.com