Ben Montero makes wholesome, melancholic, often colorful, comic strip style art. The Melbourne artist has 170K followers on Instagram and 41K on Twitter. Montero’s art style mixed with mental health themes reminds me of Paramore’s After Laughter album which Hayley Williams describes as sad songs that sound happy. I have been aware of Bjenny for several years now, I have shared his art across platforms and saved most of it for wallpapers, inspiration, and simple pick me ups because his art can make you feel better about your situation. Several things inspire me when it comes to Ben’s art; color choice, minimal elements (in most pieces), cute original animal characters, wholesome and mental health advocating topics, clean line work and use of water color. I often find that I gravitate toward “doodle or cartoon like” styles and like to alternate tools such as pen and watercolor or pencil and marker etc. to give a sense of dimension to my pieces. I find that Ben does a great job of giving his simplistic drawings and comics dimension through minimal color palettes, different tools, or the way he utilizes space in his pieces such as the fenced in photo in the collage above. I appreciate the subject matter of Montero’s content showing positive and negative behaviors, addressing mental health, crises and issues faced around the world as well stigmatized topics.
Bjenny Montero
Art Bananas 