A bestiary in motion.
Renan Santos
Renan Santos draws the space between tenderness and the uncanny: nineteenth-century hatching, animal-headed characters, domestic rituals and walls that turn the street into a story.
01 / The hand, the wall, the strange
Old techniques. New creatures.
Born in Canoas in 1984, Renan is a self-taught Brazilian illustrator and visual artist. After studying architecture at ULBRA in 2006, he chose the line, the plate and the painted wall.
Ink that thinks in lines.
The old plate, still alive.
Small worlds, expanded.
Studio image / Balloney archive 02 / Field notes
A drawing can be a door.
His practice moves between Indian ink, metal engraving, drypoint and oil painting. The same visual identity travels from children’s books and a reissue of Dom Quixote to large-scale murals, street art and fabric prints.
Renan builds images from accumulated notes, daily life and the aftertaste of memory, then leaves enough silence for the viewer to complete the story.
03 / Outside the frame
Small enough for a magnifying glass. Large enough for a city.
From the intimate pressure of a print to a mural on São Paulo’s Minhocão, Renan’s work expands without losing its handmade pulse.
Read the mural archive ↗04 / Inception
Enter the Inception archive.
Seven Balloney works, from numbered editions to the strange, tactile world of Renan’s etching and drawing.
7 / works in this chapter
101 N/A / Renan Santos
Last dance
102 N/A / Renan Santos
Dinner for two
103 N/A / Renan Santos
Choking cat
104 N/A / Renan Santos
Personal Vault
![[no title] / Celebrating 10 years / Renan Santos](/images/artworks/renan-celebrating-10-years.jpg)
106 N/A / Renan Santos
[no title] / Celebrating 10 years
05 / Research trail
Keep following the line.
A selected trail through Renan’s own site, exhibition records, interviews and public mural documentation.