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Follow Friday: Andrea Serio

29 November 2019

Andrea Serio is a published artist based in Turin. He has a distinctive style, featuring coloured pencils with gestural strokes and rich visual texture, much like the Van Gogh's Starry Night, but with coloured pencils.

I love the way that he doesn't blend all the coloured pencil strokes into one photo realism, which coloured pencil artists often do. Instead, he leaves fast 'sketchy', almost childish looking strokes about, which gives the illustrations energy and visual texture.

Like so many artists that I love, Andrea Serio is an expert in capturing the illusion of light. I like the use of orangey glow that features so much in his illustrations, reminiscent of sunset and Italian countryside.

His illustrations are often atmospheric, and tickle the imagination. His style brings to mind the dizzy visual texture and atmosphere of Van Gogh's Starry Night which was one of my childhood favourites.

Like with Lena Rivo, he is bold with contrasts, putting light and shadows, warm and cool colours, smooth and staccato strokes, right next to each other. The result is very effective, with the contrasting elements complementing each other, and making the overall illustration visually rich and remarkable. This is something I hope to implement in my own work too.