An Artist a Week: Jimenna “Jiji” Carrasco

 

Week 10: Jimenna “Jiji” Carrasco
“Full Crow Moon” (2016) (Amazing Half Moon follow-up here!)

(Find her on Twitter, Etsy, InPrnt, or her website.)

Jiji is a twitter find that works freelance in the comic and book illustration industry. Some of her common themes of work are comic/cartoon girls, witches, mermaids, and pieces focusing on fashion. She works in ink and watercolor primarily.

As a sucker for watercolor, it’s only natural that I would gravitate toward Jiji. Her art can drift from incredibly cutesy to slightly haunting (see above) to incredible sass and woman-kick-butt power. Each character is darling and spunky and cutesy and unique in one. She does not shy away from women (or half-fish-half-women!) of different sizes, including joyful and sensual and plump. There are sometimes light elements of bondage, some super slight nudity, and some very very kickass empowered ladies with delightfully rosy cheeks.

Jiji uses subtle dashes of color in a lot of her pieces (including her witch-you commissions ) and sometimes saturates the colors, as with her Sailor Merms but any way you look at it, she is a master of the watercolor method. (Her digital work is also nothing to snub!)

Some of my favorite pieces are her mermaids, but her witch-sonas are also incredibly cute. Either way you look at it, Jiji is an inspiration for cute-sass and watercolor. If I could be half the artist at creating characters that she is with each new witch or mermaid she draws into existence, I’d be the happiest artist in the world.