Kasandra Suarez

Illustrator and Character Designer[email protected]

Hi hi
So this website is the beginning to a whole new journey…
I am a sophmore at MCAD, majoring in Illustration and perhaps minoring in Teaching Artist.Artist Q&A:
1. What mediums do you like to use and why? I use more digital mediums when it comes to making my artwork. I receive a tablet for Christmas and that changed my fourteen year old’s life. I discovered that digital art has infinite colors, tools to edit, and is transportable ; I always seems to be charmed by all the different brushes to use for texture on my drawings till this day, so many textures to discover everyday .2. When making art, what is your intended audience? My intended audience would be people who like a large range of saturated color. It helps bring a viewer in, I usually have element in my artwork that create movement or live in a surreal environment. I feel as if my target is everyone of all ages who enjoys a bright palette.3. You have many playful themes in your art, are you inspired by children or children’s media? My themes in my art is a mixture of cute and horror. I find my artwork to be cute due to cartoon shows I watched, which was on Nickelodeon and PBSKids channels. My favorite shows is Dragon Tails, Word Girl, and Yo Gabba Gabba. The horror aspect comes from my older cousins playing horror games around me and I decided in order to toughen up I must draw and watch more scary videos. All those scary stuff began to end up in my artwork and fusing with the cuteness.
4. Your work is very colorful; how do you go about choosing a color palette and do you have any favorite color palettes? It’s been such a natural habit choosing a color palette. It definitely is because I have a better understanding of color theory. At this point mix-matching color until they are cohesive is how my artist brain functions. When I get stuck I use websites like Color.adobe.com or Coolors.com. To simplify the answer, my favorite color is hot pink or pastel green.
5. What is your favorite thing to draw? I enjoy drawings anthropomorphic animals, original characters, or a mixture of both. Sometimes personal aspects of the people around me are applied to the characters.
6. What part of the drawing process do you like best? This one is tricky, I enjoy inking because I’m challenging myself to improve. So when I see an artwork that has an adequate outline I see progress. But at the same time I love shading, making things appear less flat is what my mind tends to hyper focus on.
7. Do you work more intuitively and make decisions as you draw or do you have it planned out meticulously from the start? I know teachers will kill me if they find out but, I usually go with the first idea in my head. I scribble a bunch of thumbnails that are required but I never think about it afterwards.
8. What themes show up in your art, whether purposefully or not? I see some of my internal thoughts or feelings show in my artwork, such as: family/relationships, womanly figures, sexuality, femininity and masculinity coexisting, childhood, magical surrealism, dreams, and comedy.
9. Do any parts of your life inspire you? If so, how? What inspires me is breaking down all that goes inside my head and transform it into a visual narrative. It’s hard to find the word for certain feelings, I figured that I could illustrate it. It truly has let me understand myself more.
10. What do you like and what do you dislike about the artworld? I like the different art styles that come with creating art. When you are in a classroom, observing and drawing one singular thing it fun to reveal that everyone’s way of that object does not appear the same. Sometimes other artist respond to their artwork with “I don’t know why I made it” and I believe that there is definitely a good reason deep down, somewhere. It’s best to encourage other artist to search for that why?
11. What is your strongest point as an artist? I wonder if I’ve achieved in my artwork a sense of magic and liveliness, maybe the colors give it that vibrancy. I think an artwork is more strong with an interesting composition, I try to prioritize that in the pieces.
12. How has attending art school changed your art if it has? Definitely, MCAD to me is a place that has brought other creative artist together. I realized soon in my life that having other artist near me is what inspires me to create, motivates me to achieve, allows me meet artist I respect. I don’t use/have social media at all, so MCAD is my way to seeing other artworks and chatting with people. Always grateful to be in a community, in my little art world that I’ll cherish forever.