Ruth Mora, known on instagram as @_meanmachine, is an LA based Illustrator and Comix Artist. She mostly sells risograph prints online and promotes herself through her instagram page. She uses a combination of hand drawn illustration using brush pens which is then scanned, edited and coloured digitally. She also uses vector illustration.

I really appreciate the fact that she doesn’t shy away from expressing difficult emotions, as well as being politically and socially conscious by using wit and humour. She accomplishes this both in her naive, punk influenced illustration style as well as her choice of copy.

Since the themes of her work are so relatable to people, her work is often shared through instagram stories which increases her exposure. She currently has over 148K followers as a result. This is something I will bare in mind when trying to produce my own work as I feel like what I am currently lacking is any work that meets this point between personal, witty and stylish. If content is relatable, people are much more likely to share but more importantly, they connect with you and your work on a deeper level.

“I guess at the core of it, I’m an artist. But I like to say I’m an illustrator and designer within the professional realm. There’s so many different types of artists and adding the title of illustrator and designer sort of helps distinguish what kind of work I do, I think. I still have a hard time fitting myself and my work into a box, though.”

– Ruth Mora interviewed by Ponyboy Magazine

Ruth has claimed to have been influenced by…

Raymond Pettibon

In 1976, self taught punk artist, Raymond Pettibon got his start. He began designing album covers, flyers, posters and zines for the southern Californian punk band, Black Flag and other groups on SST Records, owned and operated by his older brother, Greg Ginn.

He gains inspiration from comics, cartoons, politics, and other pop culture iconography and works in a style of handwritten text and intentionally rough doodled illustrations which he blacks out areas with India ink. He mostly works in black and white but occasionally will introduce colour using pencil, watercolour, collage, gouache or acrylic paint.

In the 1980s, flyposting and handing out flyers was practically the only way to distribute the controversial material to a wider audience at a time when it was almost impossible to gather momentum to a counter cultural movement such as punk in conventional media. Pettibon’s work was perfectly suited to being photocopied over and over again for that purpose.