How long have you been illustrating for?

I've been illustrating professionally for a little over two years, but I've been drawing all my life. I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Illustration in 2013.

 

Portraying a range of women and body types appears to be an important part of your work, would you agree with this?

Yes, absolutely! Representation matters, and I firmly believe that if you're creating content you have a responsibility to represent all sorts of people, especially people marginalised by mainstream culture.

 

What is it about drawing a range of women you enjoy?

Aside from the importance of representation-- it's just more interesting! There are people who draw nothing but women all their lives and somehow manage to really only draw the same woman, or the same exact shape of woman, the entire time. That just seems so boring to me-- and visually, it's not a smart move. A variety of shapes, colours, poses-- all those things make art more interesting. It's harder to do when you're drawing the same idealised white model-like woman over and over.

 

Are there any other illustrators that you really admire?

Tons! There are so many great people working right now. I could list names all day! But a few that stand out to me at the moment-- Hellen Jo, Cathy G. Johnson, Polly Guo, Rebecca Mock... Seriously, I could go for days!

 

Where would you like to see your work feature in the future?

I'd be really interested in doing some fashion illustration-- it's a hard industry to break into because there's already such a set idea of what fashion illustration looks like, and it doesn't look like what I draw. But I'm passionate about clothes and I think that shows in my work, and I'd love to get a chance to draw some professionally!