It has been a long time since we went around the web to teach you more interesting illustrators. This time we are going to Portugal to talk with Kitty Cat, who mixes her love for traditional tattoos and old illustrations from the middle of the century to make merchandising, posters or logos for companies / businesses … We know her a little more and we present her work…
David Aresté
M.S: Hello Kitty, it is a pleasure that you are here, how are you?
Hi there David, i´m very good!
It’s my pleasure, thank you for your invitation.
M.S: To get to know you a little better, tell us how you started in design and illustration world and your interest for that…
Well since i was a kid i love arts in general and i was always looking to create something. Whether it was drawing or painting or trying to capture moments with some old cameras that my father had around the house. My mother studied Arts and was always painting pillows and everything. She’s still very creative nowadays so I guess I followed her steps merging with my dad´s love for photography and video.
My background has a lot of different areas which includes Graphic Design, Photography, Audio and Video so i have a bit of everything in me. On my final project for high school I was shooting a major Fashion Event with a professional video Camera and did all the post production by myself. It was hard but a lot of fun.
Then I started to follow my interest in photography so I went to school again at night while on my Internship at a television company. Eventually I started to shoot at some festivals abroad and since my friends and relatives are musicians it didn’t take me that long to include Design in my life again because of posters, flyers, illustrations, album covers etc.
I’m more into Rock´n Roll, 50´s, Midcentury illustrations but I like to give it a twist since i´m also a shop manager at a tattoo shop, so I tend to mix my love for traditional tattoos, music and old midcentury illustrations.
M.S: How do you make your illustrations? What are your tools, techniques or what you use …
Normally I use my ipad a lot and work on procreate. That’s where I make my sketches and give it some color. Then usually I vectorize the artwork on my Mac because I need to have a clean artwork and ready to print in whatever the client needs.
M.S: Looking at some of your work we see merchandising designs, t-shirts, gig posters … What do you like to do the most?
Indeed, I love to make merch either for bands, festivals, shops, brands etc. In terms of preference it depends on the type of work and my mood because sometimes i’m more into posters and other times I prefer to make t-shirt designs. At the moment
i’m more into Merch and T shirt designs because there’s a lot more freedom to sketch.
M.S: What artist or event would you like to work for?
I´m very lucky already to have worked with a lot of cool bands, brands and clients from all over the world. From Mexico to US, from Japan to Europe, i´m very grateful for the amazing clients and friends so I can’t really answer 🙂
M.S: If people want to get in touch with you, how can they do it?
You can reach me on my instagram : @kittycatkustomarts
or by email: catespiga@gmail.com
M.S: What are you working on? Will you publish something soon?
Currently I have some projects on my hands, normally I can’t really reveal anything till the client says it´s ok but I have some merch coming up for some amazing bands, brands and barbershops too. Stay tuned for some sneak peek alerts 😉
M.S: We suppose that it has been quite an achievement to endure everything that the covid has brought us, I do not know the expectations you have for this end of the year and 2022 …
Yes, weird times indeed with this pandemic. Made us all get more in touch with ourselves and also to be close to others in a digital form i guess.
I hope this all comes back to normal soon and we can all get along with our lives with health and strength. Luckily I had work going on in some ways but as i mentioned before i have friends and clients that work in Music that couldn´t work at all for some time and were struggling for a while. We need to help each other to get this going on.
M.S: Thank you for everything, it has been a pleasure and if you want to say something that has not been said this is the moment … we follow in your footsteps, big hug
Thank you for your kind invitation and sharing other artists’ work. Enjoy your day! Big hugs!
Cat