Featured Artist: Arielle Rizal

Featured Artists showcases several pieces from one of our submitters while also providing a closer look at the artistic process. One of our featured artists for this issue, Arielle Rizal, told us about her artistic influences.

What is your artistic process like?

For preplanning and figuring out what to draw, I mainly take inspiration from TV shows. These particular pieces were inspired by Blood of Zeus and Castlevania on Netflix, which I binge-watched last week and absolutely loved. I usually like to draw a lot of characters by different creators, which pays off when I design Monarch Madness t-shirts with Alex Wong and use my prior experiences of drawing fan art. Drawing for The Monarch is where I get to hone my creativity and take more control of the sketching process, but I’d say my style is influenced by these shows.

 When do you draw?

I like to watch TV while I draw, or just with any type of background noise like YouTube or music. I usually draw on weekends and during my free time. Doing digital art pretty much means I can draw whenever, wherever, and I don’t have to worry about refilling art supplies–just about my battery percentage.

Who or what inspires your art style? How would you describe your aesthetic?

I think my aesthetic is best described as “Oh shiny”, which I do during the final rendering process. When I sketch, I use magazine covers and photo shoots to reference poses, body proportions, and composition. For the line art (my favorite part of the process), I take a lot of influence from manga and anime because I am a giant weeaboo, mainly from artists Naoko Tekuchi and Hirohiko Araki. I often take inspiration from other artists like @kellydotylovessoup and @tarotmisu on Instagram when doing coloring and shading. Color palettes are difficult for me, so I like to use flat colors from animated tv shows/movies or pieces online because they usually have their color theory figured out.

Thanks so much, Arielle! If you’d like to view more of Arielle’s art, you can find her on Instagram @yeed_haw_art