Inspiration from above: Shaping Clouds

Look up at the sky, what do you see? Do you see the shapeless forms that cover us from above? The clouds, we mean. What do they look like to you? Do you see that face over there? What about that animal? Or is it actually a spaceship?

The beauty of clouds is that you can imagine them however you want. Nobody is right or wrong in this creative game of imaginative freedom. And clouds are intrinsically linked to our childhood too – to that first time we develop our ability to imagine things, to think abstractly. We’ve all looked up at the clouds as children and seen something represented in them – and we often still do as adults!

It is this perfect insight that Martin ‘Tincho’ Feijoo tapped into for his latest side project, Shaping Clouds, for which he traced drawings of animals, objects and faces that he saw in the clouds, onto photos he had taken of them. In ten simple but beautiful drawings, Tincho released his inner child again.

“When I was younger I was told by a friend that clouds’ shapes were created by expert balloon-twister clowns who lived in the sky,” he told us. “I was at that age where I looked up and thought to myself, ‘well, I guess that could be true!’ and the idea stayed with me.”

Recently on holiday in Mexico, Tincho noticed the clouds were much more shapely than in his hometown Madrid. Once again, he began imagining what the different clouds could represent.  He brought home a series of photos he took of the Mexican skyline and began illustrating.

“The drawings were quite challenging but really fun – I hadn’t sat down to draw like that in years! In some cases I saw immediately in the shape of the cloud what I wanted to draw. In others, no. The crocodile was originally going to be a dog, for example! When you’re imagining the shape of the cloud, you can also create a character to fit it. I also always tried to include a little detail that people perhaps might not see first time round, like the monkeys on Darwin (see illustration below).”

This cute personification of the characters and the beautiful simplicity and insight of the idea meant that Shaping Clouds quickly went viral as soon as Tincho posted it online. The project has been featured in publications all over the world, from New Zealand to France, from art blogs to fashion magazines, all the way to national daily newspapers.

“There is no secret to the success of Shaping Clouds,” Tincho says modestly. “Well, I guess the secret is to have an idea, and actually do it. Yeah, it wasn’t that easy, but I dedicated time to it, and did it. That’s all! I sent it out to lots of art blogs and people liked the idea, mostly I think because it’s a thought that everyone has had before, but nobody had ever actually done (the drawings). And also because there is no brand behind it. No ulterior motives.”

We asked Tincho how his life had changed since becoming ‘that clouds guy’, and he laughed, saying he’s still waiting for the first paycheck to come in. He has, however, been contacted by advertisers all over the world saying “stick a logo on that and we’ve got a campaign!” and even by a publishing house who want to make a book with more designs. For now, however, he’s just happy to soak up his 15 minutes:

“I’m proud. The repercussion the project has had online has surprised me enormously and it’s appeared in places that I never imagined it would – the Daily Mail and Telegraph newspapers, for starters! It’s become a campaign of self-promotion in fact – this little project of ten drawings that I did in a basement and then published on a blog has, in an instant, become the piece of work I am most known for, more than all of my work from ten years in advertising!”

As for his next project, Tincho was tight-lipped: “Well, I certainly don’t see myself drawing clouds for the rest of my life… I’d be bored rigid! I have a new one in the pipeline though, but no, I won’t tell you what it is… you’ll just have to wait and see! Right now though, I just want to enjoy what I’ve done here with Shaping Clouds.”

Visit Shaping Clouds to see the full set of illustrations.