Misterpiro Brings an Explosion of Color to Domestika Creatives

We took a peek inside Misterpiro’s studio to discover the process behind his colorful works

“Asking me what my favorite color is, is like asking a musician what’s their favorite note,” declares painter and street artist Andrés Sánchez-Ocaña (1994), aka Misterpiro. It’s a perfect summary of his visual style. This artist’s colorful work has decorated walls, spaces and art galleries in cities like New York, Cancun, Milan, London, Lisbon and Barcelona.

In 2018 he was named one of Spain’s most promising young entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine, but his road to success started much earlier, and in his native city: Palencia. He created his first graffiti at the startlingly precocious age of 11, having received no artistic training or studies.

His passion for intervening in public spaces evolved away from street art to his current style, which combines a range of techniques, materials and media under a single, defining, umbrella: his amazing use of color.

An organic creative process

Misterpiro has no fear of the blank canvas. He attacks it with rapid, impulsive brushstrokes, then shapes the colors. “I practically never think about the first layers,“ explains the artist.

“I don’t usually do any preparatory sketches, so instead of me deciding which color to use, it’s the work that suggests the right colors as it progresses,” he adds.

Misterpiro defines this process as “an exercise in trial and error” which results in works that are full of bright colors that literally spill off the canvas. The artist says he usually orders canvases with thick frames to allow him to include the edges in the work.“

The paint drips down the sides, like when you cut a tree and see all the inner rings that tell you how old it is. Except here it’s not wood, but layers of paint telling the life story,” he explains.

The brush accumulates layers of paint

After creating the first layers, Misterpiro continues working with the same brush and uses the canvas as his palette. “When you press down on the brush in a certain way, the other colors come out and leave traces of the initial color scheme.

That’s where the fun lies. I like mixing colors on the canvas itself, instead of preparing them in advance,” he adds.

Different media and techniques

When Misterpiro moved away from graffiti, he started working from home on new techniques. He left the force of spray paint for the delicate nature of pencil and watercolor. And he switched medium: from walls to paper and canvas. But he soon saw the need to add a kind of character he couldn’t obtain through watercolor alone. So that’s when he started mixing two apparently opposite worlds.

Now he combines everything from wax to acrylic, spray, pencil and even neon lighting in a bright approach he introduced in his latest works. “I really wanted to work with lighting, including neons. When you place it over or bring one near a work, it completely changes the color range,” he explains. He has also collaborated with a range of other artists, and decorated furniture and even cars with his particularly colorful style.

Love this video? Learn more about Misterpiro’s work in Instagram. If you want to discover more creatives from a range of disciplines, don’t miss the other videos in the Domestika Creatives series.

And if you want to learn illustration and painting, check out all these Domestika courses.

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