Maria Ramos’ illustrations will have you smiling ear to ear

For Spanish illustrator Maria Ramos, it is the initial beginnings of a drawing that really excite her creatively. “The thing I like most is the creative part of the idea,” she elaborates. “I mean, the process of thinking what I am going to tell.”

This preliminary thought process means that Maria’s illustrations have an instant narrative driving them. Often one-piece comics, they contain an understandable and a smile-inducing character. “I usually start from concepts or single elements that obsess me for a period of time,” she tells It’s Nice That. “Then, little by little, the idea begins to shape in my mind and finally it gets form and sense.”

Maria’s works focus upon a comic book layout and children’s books, she also “combines this creativity with teaching illustration at the European Design School, Madrid”. Throughout Maria’s works there is an intentional overtone of playful fun. “I love creating different atmospheres in my works and then transmit them through my drawings. I love the idea of working with objects or scenes of rooms without characters in them.”

Currently Maria has been working on a comic based upon Chabel’s shining house. “Chabel,” she tells It’s Nice That “is the Spanish version of a Barbie doll”. Focusing on the concept of light the original Chabel’s house “had a remote control with which you could control the lights and other objects such as the TV, the refrigerator, lamps and so on.” The illustrator’s attraction to such an object came from “the aesthetic of those objects and starting from this point of departure, I am creating a story that has nothing to do with that male chauvinist toy I used to play with when I was a child”.