ABOUT PEDRAWS
You've stumbled into the waters of this Brazilian fish artist. Pull up a chair. The fish are friendly.
I hope you take a moment to swim around my little world.
THE STORY
How It All Started
Pedro Oliveira is a Brazilian illustrator (that's me, hi!) who spent nearly a decade living in the United States before finally coming back home.
Coming back to Brazil wasn't just a move. It was a return to something I didn't realize I'd been missing the whole time. Fish have always been a big part of life here. The fishing culture, the rivers and coasts, the way seafood ends up at the center of every table that matters, the little fish motifs you see tiled onto buildings and woven into folk art. Fish mean community. They mean sustenance. They mean home.
So it makes sense that fish became my thing. What started as something simple and grounding, a reminder of the beaches I grew up near, slowly turned into something full of color, pattern, and personality. One fish turned into many. And now here we are.
All of the artwork is created digitally, one piece at a time, with a lot of care, curiosity, and probably too many color palettes open at once.
About My Fish
Fish are a huge part of Brazilian culture. Fishing communities, folk symbolism, food shared at big loud tables. I grew up surrounded by all of that without really thinking about it. Now I make art about it.
Every piece starts with a simple shape and gets built up by hand, one at a time. I work digitally, layering in color and pattern until the fish feels like its own thing. There's no template, no system. My process really reflects the jeito brasileiro, which is that very Brazilian way of figuring it out as you go and making it work anyway. It takes longer than it probably should, but that's kind of the point.
