Interview: Self-Taught Illustrator Mia Charro Talks Learning Digital and the Power of Positive Thinking

I find few things as delight­ful as ani­mals wear­ing flower crowns. For years, illus­tra­tor Mia Char­ro has imag­ined what cats, dogs, sloths, and even hip­pos would look like adorned with col­or­ful blos­soms placed atop their heads. I’m not the only per­son who finds this series endearing—it’s gained a lot of pos­i­tive atten­tion for her work. (You can find it on Insta­gram and Society6!)

I spoke to Mia about the ongo­ing series and the path she took to becom­ing an illus­tra­tor. Spoil­er alert: she was­n’t always an illus­tra­tor! Learn more about how she shaped her career and how the pow­er of pos­i­tive think­ing is at the heart of much of her imagery.

You’ve said before that you did­n’t attend art school, and that you devel­oped your skills as an illus­tra­tor and design­er at your first job. Can you explain more about this journey?

Of course. Ever since I can remem­ber I’ve always liked to draw. I illus­trat­ed my own sto­ries and I filled up the school’s tables with doo­dles, plants, and robots drawn with a pen­cil. But I nev­er thought about work­ing with it. After col­lege I decid­ed to take a web design course and, among oth­er pro­grams, I learned how to use Pho­to­shop. I dis­cov­ered the won­der­ful world of Con­trol + Z, which allowed you to solve mis­takes, use lay­ers and how they fused togeth­er… It was new ter­ri­to­ry that was unwrap­ping right in front of me. So, I spent lots of time at home exper­i­ment­ing, I even wrote a poet­ry book with dig­i­tal collages.

What did you learn for your­self and how did you even­tu­al­ly tran­si­tion into illustration?

Lat­er on and thanks to this course, I start­ed to work in a com­pa­ny that designed online cours­es. In order to make these cours­es, they gave us instruc­tions that were the expla­na­tion of the text and the descrip­tion of an image that had to go with it. We had to look for that image or a sim­i­lar one in stock sites, which took a very long time, so I con­clud­ed that it was much quick­er to make a draw­ing in Adobe Flash. My boss­es liked the idea and that’s how I start­ed to cre­ate a whole lot of vec­tor illustrations.

Many times, we had some free time at work and I ded­i­cat­ed those hours to draw and learn how to use oth­er pro­grams like Adobe Illus­tra­tor; with patience and a lot of prac­tice. The most valu­able les­son I learned around that time was that, even though I was a lit­tle tired of mak­ing stock-like illus­tra­tions (peo­ple in meet­ings, shak­ing hands, walk­ing down the city, talk­ing, at a work table…), they allowed me to devel­op my tech­nique a lot. So, “you nev­er know when some­thing bad turns into a blessing”.

When I had the idea to write sto­ries, illus­trat­ing them came nat­u­ral­ly. Writ­ing and illus­trat­ing at the same time allows you to dive deeply into the cre­ative process.

What is your process for cre­at­ing your work digitally?

The idea comes first, like a flash, some­thing you want to draw and com­mu­ni­cate. I hon­est­ly do sketch­es on paper very rarely. I tend to work direct­ly on the com­put­er, and I fix shapes and change col­ors dur­ing the process. Truth is I save a lot on paper and materials 🙂

I’ve used Pho­to­shop the most, with Kyle T. Webster’s brush­es (absolute­ly advis­able to use) but also Illus­tra­tor and Flash. Even though Adobe Flash has always been thought for mak­ing ani­ma­tions, I’ve always found it to be a great tool for mak­ing vec­tor draw­ings, even bet­ter than Adobe Illus­tra­tor. It’s much more organ­ic, sim­pler… very sim­i­lar to what today is Adobe Illus­tra­tor Draw for tablets. At first, I did every­thing with the mouse, but then I bought a Wacom Intu­os Pro tablet and I thought it was very worth it.

A year ago, I dis­cov­ered the iPad Pro and it com­plete­ly changed the rules of the game. Now I draw a lot in the iPad, with Pro­cre­ate and Adobe Illus­tra­tor Draw, and then I do the final touch­es with Pho­to­shop on the com­put­er. The iPad gives you the free­dom to take it every­where, and wher­ev­er inspi­ra­tion strikes, you’re ready to cap­ture it.

Your work has a pos­i­tive spin to it, often with empow­er­ing quotes. What inspires you to cre­ate this type of work? How do you fos­ter this pos­i­tiv­i­ty in your own life?

A few years ago I went through com­pli­cat­ed times in my life and I start­ed get­ting pan­ic attacks that derived in ago­ra­pho­bia. I’m telling this because there will be some peo­ple who read the inter­view who have gone through the same, that way they can know there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Around that time, I worked a lot on “real­iz­ing” what had tak­en me there, what was mak­ing me feel con­stant­ly stressed. I immersed myself in yoga and med­i­ta­tion, and I noticed an under­ground stream of thoughts that soft­ly sneaked under our con­scious­ness. Those ideas like “it won’t go well”, “you’re not wor­thy enough”… I dis­cov­ered the impor­tance of these neg­a­tive sub­con­scious thoughts in our life of which we don’t real­ize. They’re beliefs that we have cul­ti­vat­ed since we were lit­tle and which have grown in our per­cep­tion of real­i­ty ever since. Yoga speaks of these thoughts and how to change them, it’s what we have adapt­ed to our west­ern cul­ture as “pos­i­tive think­ing” or NLP. So, I decid­ed to do my part to add a bit more pos­i­tiv­i­ty in our lives. I like to think that a frame with a pos­i­tive quote that you read before leav­ing home or when you get back is like a lit­tle seed of light in your head.

Your ani­mals wear­ing flo­ral crowns are so charm­ing. How did you come up with the idea? How has it evolved since you first began?

The idea came to me with my first draw­ing of ani­mals with flower crowns “Fri­da Cath­lo”. Truth is, the image of Fri­da Cath­lo, along with its name, came to me in a flash. I didn’t have to make any effort to get it. Some­times inspi­ra­tion is like that; it arrives, whis­pers to you and leaves. And I saw that flow­ers on the head per­fect­ly rep­re­sent­ed what I want­ed to trans­mit: “Your mind is a gar­den. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flow­ers or you can grow weeds.”

So, I start­ed draw­ing flow­ers on top of almost all of my char­ac­ters’ and ani­mals’ heads. Truth is that this con­cept, in par­tic­u­lar, hasn’t changed much, and I like that for now. I love draw­ing ani­mals with flow­ers on their heads. We’ll see if it turns into some­thing else. maybe the inspi­ra­tion comes back and touch­es my forehead.

Where has your career tak­en you in the past cou­ple of years? Is there any­thing about it that has sur­prised you?

I’ve grown a lot as an illus­tra­tor in the past cou­ple of years. The agency that rep­re­sents me—Jewel Brand­ing—has got­ten me very inter­est­ing clients, and I’m so grate­ful. I’ve worked with The Hap­py Plan­ner, Anthro­polo­gie, Dr. Oz The Good Life, I’ve col­lab­o­rat­ed on a note­book with Amnesty International…

One of the things that I’m the most sur­prised about is the impor­tance that Insta­gram has got­ten in these two years. It’s an incred­i­ble tool to show your work and to share inquiries and ideas with artists. It has turned into some­thing essen­tial for my business.

Many of your illus­tra­tions are on prod­ucts. Does illus­trat­ing on an object change how you approach the imagery at all?

Well, truth is that I’m incred­i­bly lucky that 80% of what I do is illus­trate what inspires me and then there are com­pa­nies that want to use those images for their cups, paint­ings, note­books, cards, fabrics…
The prob­lem is that I’m used to think­ing in 2D illus­tra­tions on 8 x 11-inch sheets or flat paper. When you have to adapt your illus­tra­tion in a 3D prod­uct, this is a more ardu­ous work. You have to con­sid­er the mate­r­i­al, the num­ber of col­ors… You need to find a bal­ance between the main idea and the final prod­uct, in a way where you don’t lose what you want­ed to com­mu­ni­cate at the begin­ning. For exam­ple, in my Society6 store, I have illus­tra­tions that lose strength if I adopt them for mugs.

What piece of advice, habit, or tool has helped you the most in your career?

The quote that has helped me the most and which I want to share with you is “Where there’s a will there’s a way”. Willpow­er moves moun­tains, you just have to get it going. But remem­ber that you also need breaks. If a motor is con­stant­ly work­ing at 100%, it burns fast. And oth­er of my foun­da­tions are yoga and med­i­ta­tion, which leads us towards self-dis­cov­ery, to sail­ing through our immen­si­ties, to dis­cov­er how valu­able each one of us is.