Lucía Cerdá
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Nov 11
- 4 min read
Lucía Cerdá is an illustrator and graphic designer from Argentina, currently living in Barcelona. She draws inspiration from cartoon styles and her everyday experiences. Her work often features animals in human situations, creating small, standalone stories. Her style is straightforward and minimal, using quick, expressive lines and intentionally rough finishes. Having lived in Argentina, Northern Ireland, and Spain, she brings a unique sense of place to her art. In addition to her freelance projects, she is a member of the fanzine collective Fastic Bombastic and is currently working on her first graphic novel.
Q: Your work blends dark humour with bright colours. Where does that mix come from for you?
A: I think my style is heavily influenced by cartoons. I’ve always loved them, especially now as an adult. I am a huge fan of cartoons with dark humour mixed with a colourful and bright aesthetic, for example Bojack Horseman, Smiling Friends, Rick and Morty, Bob’s Burgers, South Park, etc. It’s a mix that allows darker jokes without being sinister or depressing, and that’s something that really appeals to me when creating my own illustrations. If you take a look, a lot of my characters are often sad or crying!
Q: You often draw animals in human-like situations. What makes them such good storytellers?
A: I’ve never been good at drawing people haha. It’s always been more interesting to me to draw animals and play with their physical aspects and even the stereotypes related to them, I think that does a lot of the storytelling. I think also to see animals in human-like situations allows more comedy and freedom to the narrative, just look at TikToks of animals behaving like humans. Also, when I don’t know what to draw I always end up drawing rats or cats for some reason.
Q: There’s a raw, almost childlike feel in your lines. Is that instinct or something you build intentionally?
A: A bit of both I think… I’ve never been a very meticulous illustrator, one of my worst subjects in university was life drawing, I hated it. I’m more interested and fascinated by the way kids draw, they have no rules and so much freedom and emotion goes into it. And I think as we get older we tend to lose that. I am a big fan of Basquiat, who I think really mastered the technique of making something look so raw and simple but incredibly expressive and actually hard to achieve. So I intentionally do the exercise of trying to go back to that raw and expressive sketch, but a lot of the traces come quite naturally once I allow myself that freedom and chaos.
Q: You’ve lived in Argentina, Belfast, and now Barcelona. How have those places shaped your sense of humour or colour?
A: I come from sunny Argentina and Spain, so it was a big change moving to rainy and industrial Northern Ireland. I think the change really made me feel more drawn to illustrators with a bright colour palette, maybe it made me feel a bit more at home.
I have moved quite a lot, started over in many different places and met a lot of different and hilarious people, who I try to imitate poorly in my illustrations. These moves have not always been easy — new environments, new languages, new everything — but making fun of difficult situations has always helped me cope better with them, so I think that’s why humour plays a big part in my illustrations.
Q: Fanzines seem like a big part of your world. What do you like most about that DIY energy?
A: Two years ago I completed a comic book course in La Gossa, in Barcelona. From there, the students from that course created our own fanzine collective called Fastic Bombastic, where we started creating collective zines, where we are in charge of everything: theme, drawing, mockup, printing and stapling. And I think that’s what appeals to me most about zines, the fact that you’re in control of the whole process, the chaos, the messiness and the freedom that you’re doing it for yourself, for your own amusement. No clients, no pressures, no deadlines… which is a break from my day-to-day job in an advertising agency.
Q: You’re working on your first graphic novel. How different does it feel from your usual illustrations?
A: I’m super excited about this, but I have to say that it’s a longer process than I imagined. There is a lot of planning, writing and sketching involved, which makes it a more controlled project compared to my zines or illustrations. The aesthetic will still be my own, with a very bright colour palette and a more cartoonish style of characters filled with humour. The comic will be separated into two, one story set in the past and one in the future, of the same character, and it will focus on how the way they interact or behave with other characters will or could affect their path. I am hoping to finish it within the next year, so I better get on it and stop watching Bob's Burgers on repeat!
