An undiscovered artistic talent
By Kimberly Ngwenya
Burjo Ari is an artist that I find inspiring. His style of art and storytelling is what helped me to build
my own style and experiment. His art is heavily influenced by comic books and 2000s tv shows that were targeted towards young adolescents. He uses vibrant lines and shapes and his comic-like style is present when he uses thicker lines to outline his characters and thinner lines to contrast it and make it stand
out more, and this is a technique that I have put into my own artwork.
While he is somewhat anonymous, I do know based off of his Instagram page that he is a 22 year old white latino artist and he loves the 90s to 2000s look. His art consists of his own original characters that he designed in inspiration from shows like “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” and “Downtown MTV”. He likes to experiment with clothing and hair and make up unique designs for each character to show their personality, as well as use exaggerated poses to tell a story or help the audience understand something about the character’s aesthetic. He makes his characters diverse, creating a timeline of the characters and their day to day lives.
What I find unique about Ari is that he also interacts with his fans and asks them questions and he uses popular media to tell the stories and personalities about his characters. He uses a separate instagram account to post unfinished sketches or work in progress art pieces to allow fans to get a sneak peak of his work. Despite having 166,000 followers, he is more of an underground artist due to his age and how he does not like to put himself out there in the way most artists do like galleries, showcases etc.
The way Burjo structures his art is as if it were to be made into a popular tv show. He has even posted a series of drawings depicting his characters changing throughout different seasons as if they were on a show. His attention to detail is what most people notice when first looking at his art, and it is seen in what the characters wear. He uses Pinterest to find inspiration for 90s fashion. His characters are also not cliche or boring to look at, and some are flawed despite being portrayed as protagonists.
His most drawn character is Kate Medrano, an 18 year old girl living in Los Santos East. Despite being the main character, she is imperfect. She is arrogant, stubborn, lazy and reckless. Ari describes her as “the embodiment of doomed women of this generation” however instead of making it seem like something to be ashamed of, he makes the character wear her attributes like a badge of honour.
She has a confrontational nature and is viewed by adults as a “problem teen” however her personality makes her stand up for the right things and she is difficult to take down. The artist made her of Mexican decent to diversify her character, and he does this to all of his characters as well. She is mostly seen having short hair, however he sometimes draws her with longer hair and a different appearance. To show that she is just a teenager, he makes her go through the basic everyday things a teenager can relate to such as a difficult sibling, a goth phase and her struggle trying to make friends.
He has inspired me so much throughout my art journey that I made a study of his work for my Fine Art coursework because I wanted to use his human form techniques and style to inspire my own work, which is why I decided to make comic art. He has heavily influenced my art work and I aspire to be like
him and to tell my own story as I draw my own comic stories.
