A Year on the Water: Art, Process, and the Estrada Print Club
Why I Make Art, and Why I’m Starting the Estrada Print Club
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawing.
Before I knew what “style” was.
Before I knew art could be a job.
Before I had words for why certain things pulled at me the way they did.
Fish. Water. Movement. Animals that felt alive even when they were still.
Drawing was never about sitting down and making something perfect. It was a way to process what I was seeing and feeling. A way to slow things down long enough to understand them.
Fishing entered my life the same way.
Not as a sport to conquer, but as a place to pay attention.
The Water Changed Everything
Time on the water taught me something early on. Control is an illusion.
You can prepare. You can study. You can show up with the right gear and the right intentions, and still come home empty-handed. And somehow, those days often teach you more than the “successful” ones.
That lesson seeped into my artwork.
I stopped trying to make things clean and polished for the sake of it. I leaned into movement. Exaggeration. Bold lines. Color that feels alive instead of accurate.
My work isn’t meant to be a scientific illustration of a fish.
It’s meant to feel like encountering one.
Where My Style Comes From
My style is a mix of everything that shaped me.
Growing up around lowrider culture, graffiti, and sign painting taught me confidence in line and color. Fishing taught me patience and humility. Florida taught me light, contrast, and chaos.
That’s why my work looks the way it does.
Loose but intentional.
Bold but imperfect.
Structured, yet alive.
I want the viewer to feel motion, tension, and energy. The same things you feel when a fish rolls where you didn’t expect it to, or a bird cuts across the water at first light.
Every Piece Starts the Same Way
Every print I release starts as an original drawing.
That original drawing is where the energy lives. It’s the first reaction to a moment, not the polished version. From there, it gets refined, translated, and eventually turned into a print.
But over time, I realized something. The process mattered just as much as the finished piece.
And I wanted a better way to share that.
Why I Created the Estrada Print Club
The Estrada Print Club came from a simple idea.
What if, instead of isolated print releases, I documented an entire year of work as it happened?
One print per month.
Each tied to a real place and a real moment.
Each accompanied by a short written story about where I was and why it mattered.
Not a drop.
Not a sale.
A body of work unfolding in real time.
The prints are the same 11x17 size I normally sell for $100, but for a monthly fee of $59.99. The difference is commitment. Following along month by month, instead of chasing individual releases.
Something Extra I’m Excited About
Since every print begins as an original drawing, I wanted to do something special.
Each month, one Print Club member will randomly receive the original drawing that the print was created from, instead of the print.
That original is signed, dated, and worth far more than the print itself. It’s the starting point. The first mark.
There’s no sign-up gimmick and no extra cost. It’s simply part of the process, shared.
This Is a Long Game
I’m not interested in rushing this.
The Estrada Print Club is about slowing down, paying attention, and building something meaningful over time. A physical record of a year spent creating, fishing, and learning.
If you’ve ever wanted to collect my work as it’s being created, this is that opportunity.
April is Issue No. 1.
Thank you for being here and supporting the work. It truly means more than I can put into words.
Eric Estrada