Check out Froilan Ulloa’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Froilan Ulloa.

Froilan, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
As far back as I can remember I have always been a constant doodler. I didn’t really like school, so I spent most of my time drawing in my notebooks instead of taking notes. The teachers didn’t seem to mind it since I wasn’t disrupting the class. I needed to get these thoughts and questions out of my head and by creating images was one of the ways I could process them. Drawing also enabled me to block out the noise that was happening around me. If I wasn’t skateboarding or playing baseball, I was usually drawing. But I didn’t take art seriously until after graduating high school then entering a community college and realizing that this is something I needed to do.

After a few years of working on my skills, I mustered up the courage to apply to art school and really go for it as a career. After a few years, I graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2016 with a degree in Illustration and a minor in Graphic Design. My journey is still fresh and just the beginning. I’ve been fortunate enough to have already participated in some group shows for a few galleries and would wish to continue doing so. I am excited to see what the future holds.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I’m an illustrator, a designer, a doodler, but my bread and butter would be painting with acrylics. It’s the medium that I choose the majority of the time when I’m creating my art. I like to loosely work on my ideas in a sketchbook leaving enough room for any spontaneous additions when I’m working on the actual painting itself. Often times I’ll skim over my sketchbook and see what past ideas or thoughts I might have had and either start painting from there or rework them some more until I’m satisfied with the result.

I have always looked to the past to better understand the present and possibly the future. I like to think how those experiences and lessons that we had as kids have evolved us to be better beings, however, I will forever have fun and feel young during this journey we call adulthood. I find inspiration from childhood stories, fables, and pop culture. I want to create a world with familiar and unfamiliar faces and places that will have people wondering and thinking about their own past experiences and how it might have shaped them.

What do you know now that you wished you had learned earlier?
Embrace the grind and work on your craft or whatever makes you happy every day…. even if it’s for an hour or 15 minutes. Whether it is painting, skating, podcasting, volunteering, whatever, something is better than nothing! It will help keep your sanity when you’re working that day job.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I currently have a painting being shown at SugarMynt gallery in South Pasadena and the show will be up through October. You can also find out what I’m up to next on my site froiboi.com or Instagram @froiboi_arts