Flush with tiny shrubberies and charmingly obtuse wading bodies, an illustration series mines the depths of a care-free life. Milanese illustrator, Eleonora Arosio, carves out an aesthetic full with playful characters and beach scenes. Sunshine, swimming holes, and uplifting color fill the space of each of the 24-year-old’s canvases. Composed with the detailed shading of colored pencils, Arosio’s drawings are an easy mood-lifter, full of unpretentious joy and lightheartedness, but they also smack of an impish charm. The individual drawings often depict naked men and women flaunting their nude bodies in the bright light of day—and the pieces sport pithy titles to match. A nude man watering a houseplant is dubbed The Horticulturalist, while a topless woman with a bikini-shaped tan line is known as the Italian Tan Line. Safe to say, the wit is free-flowing as are the good vibes in Arosio’s artwork.
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The Creators Project spoke to the illustrator, who shares how, at a young age, her life path felt destined for a career in the arts: "I grew up in a small town near Milan, where teachers always made sure to tell my mom I would become an artist, ever since kindergarten. And it was true, in a way: I’ve always liked drawing and continued down that path by going to an art high school, and later on by attending a Fine Arts course in Milan, which gave me a wider idea of all the different creative fields and that led to focusing on illustration.“Arosio continues, adding she finds not only joy in her work but also a responsiblity to share it: “Sometimes I stop and think of how lucky I am to live in this time of history, where women are fighting so much for what is right—which is something that was not talked about enough in the past decades, probably because of the lack of social media. Now a website, a drawing, or a tweet can do a lot to teach and inspire people to fight for this, and that’s partly what I’m trying to do, in my own small way. So my creative process starts with the internet, films, books and everyday life, which I later develop onto my sketchbook and then with colored pencils.”
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