Barcelona-based illustrator Nadia Hafid sees drawing as a powerful tool for telling stories, translating complex ideas and narrative concepts into bite-size images.
Her illustrations are very much comics-inspired, treating her artistic medium as a way to communicate her thoughts. But it was only in 2016 when she developed her unique voice which she’s now recognized for. “I started having interest in geometry, straight lines, flat colors, etc,” she explained in an interview with wertn. “I found new references that are very present in my work: cinema and photography. I think it is very inspiring to be influenced by different disciplines besides your own. This helps you to grow and to understand your own work.”
“I’ve been drawing since I was a child,” she went on to say. “I grew up thinking ‘I want to be a painter artist!’ When I finished school I did mural arts courses, but I came back to the origin of my passion: drawing.” Having graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, on top of a degree in Arts Applied on the Wall from the School of Arts and Crafts (Llotja de Barcelona), Hafid now works as a freelance illustrator, collaborating with different publications and brands.
“I love composing those elements that appear in my drawing,” she says. “I also love to draw human faces, but I simplify them until they look like symbols; or human figures in the simplest way, so become almost abstract shapes representing very concrete ideas.”
We highly recommend you follow her work:
