Today we’d like to introduce you to Sophia Rojas.
Sophia , please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Ever since I was a little girl, I loved to draw! When I was around six years old, I can remember using plastic stencils of animals and coloring them in with colored pencils. This helped me understand how lines could turn into shapes which could turn into cute, little critters. All of these random, stenciled drawings of animals would always end up on either my parents’ or grandparent’s refrigerator. I guess you could say that their fridges were my first art galleries in a way.
From there, I really fell inlove with drawing and continued to use different mediums and techniques. As I got older and eventually went to art school, I began to discover different styles of illustrations and that really inspired me to figure out my own style of work. After some experimentation of trying different approaches along with becoming heavily involved in the fashion industry, I realized I took a lot of inspiration from it and started to drawn runway-inspired portraits – gals with a bold sense of style. Since then, this has been a constant motif in my drawings which I will continue to expand and evolve!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth roads never built character! Of course, there is always some kind of struggle and I think the biggest challenge of a creative producing art is just being your “worst critic.” You’re constantly thinking “I could make this way better” or “No, it’s still not 100%” but there comes a time, where you just have to let it go and stop over-thinking. Once you get over the hump and just put your work out there, it’s extremely inspiring and humbling to see the response of others! You’re showing your perspective, your beliefs, your salty attitude – it’s not just for the “sake of art.”
Please tell us about The Salty Society.
In 2016, I created “The Salty Society” where I could feature all of my fashion-inspired drawings and it just quickly, started gaining attention. Every time I posted a drawing on my social media, I would receive an inquiry of someone wanting to purchase it and this kept constantly occurring with each new piece of artwork I shared, so I decided I needed to jump on this super exciting opportunity and it just started evolving into a business.
I sell my own artwork – both originals and prints. I’ve done various collaborations with brands, musicians and special commissions for art collectors. All of my artwork is drawn or painted by hand with a certain “relaxed, carefree style.” I like messy lines, smudges, little imperfections, and asymmetry in my work because it shows “authenticity” and just “realness.” I’m very much heavily influenced by the Japanese aesthetic, “Wabi-sabi” if you can’t tell by now!
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Growing up, I used to have a big trampoline in my background. I absolutely loved it! After school or on the weekends, that’s where you would find me! Jumping and jumping and jumping, nonstop! My father used to have a bunch of fruit trees in our backyard near my trampoline, and a few of them had the orange-colored fruit called “kumquats.” If you don’t know what kind of fruit that is, picture an oval-shaped, orange-colored fruit that was the size of a grape and tasted like a weird fusion of a lemon and an apricot. No one liked these fruits, so we had quite an abundance of them on the trees. I knew no one was going to eat them or really cared about what happened to them, so one afternoon, I grabbed at least 50-60 of them off the trees and placed them all in the center of my trampoline. As I began to jump, all of the kumquats became to bounce and it was super cool to be just jumping around in a bunch of flying orange fruit! Yeah, I was a weird kid, still am!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thesaltysociety.com
- Email: thesaltysociety@gmail.com
- Instagram: @the_salty_society
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