@elenaeper

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1. What's your story? Where are you from?

Hi! I'm an illustrator, graphic and web designer based in Madrid but I was born in Teruel, the smallest province capital.

2. Tell us about your aesthetic.

I love explosions of colors, working with geometries and creating a personal imaginary surrounded by everyday objects to which I sometimes give living beings’ characteristics. I love putting eyes and mouths on everything and giving them life.

3. What is your favourite medium and why?

I prefer working with digital tool, because I can do things that I wouldn’t be able to do with traditional techniques, but also because I find the process much quicker and easier. I always have doubts about color and I change them many times; if I had to do that on paper I would go crazy.

4. What is your artistic process like?

I first draw a sketch on a Moleskine, then I digitalize it and work on that base, usually with Photoshop but I tend to change a lot of things once I’ve started working with the computer. Most often I don’t get a divine inspiration or a hologram in my head of what I have to draw… If only! The idea comes up thinking about objects or characters, and from there I create a story and develop it while I color it.

5. Who and/or what inspires your work?

I’m inspired by everyday situations, poems by tormented poets like Alejandra Pizarnik, dreams (mine or anyone else’s), works like 'The passion of Sacco and Vanzetti' by Ben Shahn, the form of some objects, a visit to the Whitney Museum, or even a couple of Camparis.

6. What role does art play in your life? How does it change the way you view the world?

It started by being just a form of expression and now it is also a job.

7. Where did you study?

I studied at IED Madrid, an MA in Illustration and Visual Communication, MA in Motion Graphics, and another MA in Graphic Design.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years? Working in an agency?

I don’t care if I am in an agency or doing personal works, as long as I do what I like and feel comfortable during the process.

9. What about in ten?

I see myself in a very quiet place, my own study in a big house with a nice garden, with cats and dogs running around, doing projects like child books and cooking paella to my friends, because by then I will have learned how to do it; it will be delicious and they will come each Saturday.

10. What do you hope to achieve with your art?

I hope to live off it. At a certain point, I would like to be able to work only in illustration, because right now it just fills a 10% of my time. To be able to relax and to focus in creating long stories, on paper or animated, comics or books.

11. Now, tell us a little more about you as a person: what is your favourite food?

What I love most in life is eating! I love cochinita pibil tacos, pizza, pastrami, the food from the Canary Islands and Iberian ham sandwiches.

12. Favourite book?

Espejo de sombras, by Felicidad Blanc, the memoirs of a woman who belongs to a family of very peculiar Spanish poets. I am a big fan of all of them. And also any comic by Amanda Baeza, Conchita Herrero, Javier Lozano or Arsène Schauwen.

13. Favourite genre of music?

Lo-Fi, surf… Bands like La Luz, Beach House, Hello Cuca, Las Piñas or Tronco.

14. What are your hobbies?

Watching series nonstop, several seasons in a day if possible. Discovering bands in Spotify and creating lists, or going to concerts. I like meeting my friends to have some beers or to write songs for bands that will never exist; reading things about murders, taking courses about anything, buying fanzines and comics, and gastronomic trips.

15. If you weren't an artist, what would you be?

I would be singer or drummer in a Riot Grrrl group.