Evge­nia Bari­nova is an illus­tra­tor orig­i­nally born in Moscow, but now based in Lon­don. She states that she’s happy to draw any­thing that make peo­ple smile! Well, Evge­nia, these grace­ful fig­ures and play­ful draw­ings make me smile! Her work is a mix­ture of extreme styl­iza­tion with a bit of ren­der­ing. It feels full yet not overly ...

Irena Zablot­ska, aka Joulu, is an artist and illus­tra­tor liv­ing in Lviv, Ukraine. If you have been read­ing this blog long enough, you will know why I was drawn to Irena’s work. The color! The shape design! The char­ac­ters! There is some­thing off-putting about her work, espe­cially in terms of her char­ac­ter design. They are ...

Tam­syn Mys­tkowski is a designer and illus­tra­tor, a recent grad­u­ate of the Edin­burgh Col­lege of Art. Tamsyn’s empha­sis on is form and the fig­ure. She plays around with the human fig­ure, fus­ing it with the land­scape and abstract­ing it to the point of non-recognition. I love that she is using the neg­a­tive space instead of sim­ply ...

This morn­ing I’m look­ing at the work of Taiwanese-based illus­tra­tor, Inca Pan. I enjoy look­ing at things where I don’t know the lan­guage. Every cul­ture has their own spe­cific sym­bols and asso­ci­a­tions, and I love that this comes forth in Inca’s work. The story telling in Tai­wan is dif­fer­ent than the in the US, and ...

Simon Peter Frank is an illus­tra­tor in Not­ting­ham, com­bin­ing color and pho­tog­ra­phy to cre­ate an almost circus-like feel to his illus­tra­tions. Maybe that has some­thing to do with the ani­mals and shapes — it feels uni­ver­sally fun. Simon often uses pho­tog­ra­phy mixed with his own draw­ings. He doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to rely on pho­tog­ra­phy for his ...

The very sweet Brie Har­ri­son got in con­tact with me recently, and I’m so glad she did! I’ve admired her work for a long while and took the oppor­tu­nity to do a ques­tion and answer ses­sion with her. Brie is a print designer and illus­tra­tor based in Suf­folk, Eng­land. You might already be famil­iar with ...

Emmanuel Kerner is a French illus­tra­tor. His spot illus­tra­tions are very char­ac­ter dri­ven, com­plete with mon­sters, robots, and pirates. I enjoy the quick, often crude nature of these draw­ings — the empha­sis is not nec­es­sar­ily in the tech­nique but in the devel­op­ment of these char­ac­ters with use of defin­i­tive lines and symbols. All images via ...

Since my youth, I’ve been a fan of pop up books. I first wrote about them dur­ing on Brown Paper Bag’s Thurs­day Round-Up. As some­one who doesn’t think very eas­ily in the 3D, the con­struc­tion of pop up books con­tin­ues to amaze me. Cou­ple that with excit­ing illus­tra­tions, and it’s a force to be reck­oned ...

I love the illus­tra­tive work of Eng­lish illus­tra­tor Jack Tea­gle. His fig­u­ra­tive, sequen­tial works are funny and well crafted. Jack’s work isn’t slap­stick funny, but sit­u­a­tional funny. I espe­cially enjoy a per­sonal project of his (shown below), which is about wrestlers try­ing to cope with every­day life. They are worse off than the com­mon per­son ...

Nadja Helena sent me a link to her work recently, and I am very glad she did. Upon first glance, her work is a bit puz­zling. Her images spare us many details. But, this is at the same what I enjoy about it. Spend­ing time with Nadja’s illus­tra­tions means that we should sus­pend our own belief ...