In her short bio, Argentinean illustrator María Luque writes: “I like to draw, and I draw a lot. I like to make people laugh with my drawing, or at least make them smile.” Indeed, her vibrant illustrations will make you smile, if nothing else.
Focused mainly on women going about their daily lives, her illustrations are drawn in a style that is purposely unrealistic, making for a spontaneous, albeit quirky, effect. Talking about her creative process with Flow Magazine, Luque relayed: “When I start, I already know if the drawing will succeed. I work fairly quickly and never make sketches. I like to work intuitively—so that it’s almost as if my hands are putting something on paper themselves as opposed to me stopping at every movement. I like going to a café or library to work; I listen to the conversations being had around me and look out the window at the people passing by.”
“Sometimes, if I am not completely satisfied with the end result, I prefer to throw the illustration away and start again because I know what didn’t work the first time round,” she admitted, adding that it’s important not to be let down by these setbacks. “For example, recently I was drawing in my sketchbook and the picture was really taking shape, but then I made a mistake. I thought I had ruined a beautiful sketchbook, but I looked at the illustration again and drew a vase over that ‘fatal error’, which, on closer inspection, was just a minor problem.”
Clearly focused on the art of drawing she explained that what she likes about her work is how it fills up her time. “When I’m not drawing, my days sometimes seem to drag,” she explained. “I do like to do other things, too, like cooking, walking, getting together with friends or kissing. But only when I draw, do I feel that time stands still in some way.”
Here are some highlights from her Instagram page:
