2021 Senior Exhibition Artists

Isabella Rivera

Art + Design: Illustration

About Isabella Rivera

Isabella Rivera, who goes by Bellastration for professional purposes, was born and raised in New Jersey and loves art of all different kinds. She is getting her BFA in Illustration with a minor in Graphic Design.. She enjoys experimenting with digital rendering techniques and dabbling in printmaking. She is a strong supporter of spreading mental health awareness and wants people to be able to express their true selves. She is passionate about creating, writing, and playing video games with friends.

Statement

My series focuses on creating tattoo-styled illustrations focusing on insects while also exploring texture and color. During quarantine I fell in love with Neo-Traditional and Modern tattoo styles and wanted to explore it myself using heavy line art and textured brushes. I chose to focus on insects because I personally have a bumblebee tattooed on my right knee which inspired me to dig further into bugs and explore the styles myself. I deeply love the color palette chosen for the pieces and the richness of hues, as well as the texture introduced instead of blurred gradients.

Towards the end of this project, I began to explore more from imagination, pairing the real and unreal together to create insects that you may not see in the wild. I deeply enjoyed combining different breeds of flowers and some other imagery in the illustrations simply because I was fascinated by the delicateness of the flowers compared to some of the insects that posed some danger. I really also loved exploring the relationship between texture and value to describe the shapes and forms depicted, creating my own type of tattoo style. In the future I would love to explore more in this direction and see where it takes me.