Focus on: Sara Ligari!

Sara is a Milan based freelance illustrator and fashion designer. She loves to work with watercolour and digital technique. Fashion, beauty and nature are her favourite fields to work on.

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KALTBLUT: Hi Sara. How did you become interested in illustration?

Sara: I loved to draw people since I was a child, but I always used to draw just for myself during boring school lessons. For me it was a kind of catharsis.  My father was an artist and, although he preferred sculpture, I learnt from him the creative process to turn ideas in to something material. I started to show my illustrations and work on my drawing skills tree years ago, after a few months experience in San Francisco. Since than I spent a lot of time in this. I created a blog where to show my illustrations and drew some banners for other small blogs for free. Then the first assignment came!

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KALTBLUT: What is your favourite medium to use?

Sara: Absolutely watercolours. I like the spontaneous and fresh look of watercolours, the blank spaces, the transparent colours. Watercolours are the result of instinctive and immediate splashes of colours, where water and fortuity play a major role. It all happens very fast and when the water dries up, what’s done is done. I try to use as little line as possible, but every one of them should have a kind of personality.

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KALTBLUT: Your illustrations are mostly related to fashion. What does fashion mean to you?

Sara: Fashion for me it’s not about dresses but about a scenario. Actually I’m not a fashion addicted at all, I like to watch it as an indicator of general trends. Like art does, fashion often can predict and interpret the issues of a period. Fashion for me it’s not just dresses and shoes, but it has to bring some meanings with her. Fashion and fast fashion are made of huge quantities of products, designed in an incredibly short time and are thrown away after the same short time.

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KALTBLUT: Who is your favourite fashion designer and why?

Sara: Maison Martin Margiela for his blank minimalism and Prada for his imperfect kind of beauty. I love when I find the beauty in the ugly things.

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KALTBLUT: From an illustrator point of view, what makes a silhouette or an outfit interesting to sketch?

Sara: A great fashion subject should somehow convey a contemporary attitude. Sometimes there is something in a cloth or in a model, or in a match of colours, that charms me. I often love to draw little defects. Moles, not-straight noses or eye circles.

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KALTBLUT: Do you have a preference between the male and female silhouette?

Sara: Since I was a child I used to draw women, ballerinas and so on. Then one day, quite recently actually, I discovered drawing men was very natural to me. The edgy male silhouette needs less precision and more interpretation. Now I like to draw both.

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KALTBLUT: You’re not only an illustrator but also a fashion designer. What inspires you the most for your creation?

Sara: I’m graduated in Fashion Design, but I work in the communication side of fashion and cosmetic. This also include graphic, photography, packaging and illustration. My inspiration is the fashion itself.

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KALTBLUT: We are in love with your last “Queens” collection. In this specific case, how was your working process?

Sara: Sometimes I feel very attracted by the flat colours and the minimal shapes of vectorial illustration. The process it’s totally different from watercolours. The latter is quick and spontaneous, while the vectorial illustration is a meticulous work of perfection and it takes a long time. The advantage is that you can change anything anytime. You can press ctrl+z and do it again and again, try different possibilities and select them later. I used to start from a quick pencil sketch and then play with Illustrator creating the shapes. At the end I add colours and I create different variations.

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KALTBLUT: What are you working on at the moment?

Sara: I’m working on an interesting editorial project in Italy. But it’s too soon to talk about it! As a personal project I’m creating a series of illustrations about yoga, with a total different vision of the female body.

Interview by Nicolas Simoneau

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Contact:

www.saraligari.it

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