Today I am going to talk to you about one of my favourite Illustrators, Viktorija and she runs Andsmile Studio. I first discovered her last year on Instagram and I fell in love with her work and free form style and have continued to follow her journey as a freelance Illustrator.
Viktorija has a studio in London where she creates and packages her designs and products to send to customers and shops around the world that stock her work. She loved drawing since she was young and it was at the age 14 that she realised that she could actually be paid for drawing. She studied Illustration at the University of Bedfordshire, where she explored and experimented to try and find her style. In her course she found that there wasn't much practical advice on how the Illustration industry worked. She graduated in 2009 and moved up to London to become an Illustrator.
Like most art graduates she didn't fall into a job straight away, she worked in a retail job until 2011. In the two years after graduating she tried to find any creative job and was sending out her portfolio and work to agencies, all the things she had been taught in University. In 2011 she became part time at her job and opened an Etsy shop, first only selling postcards and then moving onto wearable art such as earrings and brooches using her illustrations.
she says "I love freelancing! I love to be my own boss, I am so excited about each working day, about all the amazing and sometimes unexpected opportunities that come my way. But it helps to have a clear vision of what kind of work you want to do and where you want to go.
To be honest I enjoy working on my own but I do have a group of friends/creatives with whom I can discuss any creative or business worries, so having a business/creative club and support is really important."
What I really like about Viktorija's style is her bold use of colours and the free form shapes that she uses. Most of her work is done in either watercolour or gouache paint and these are two mediums that I would like to explore more of, since they are outside my comfort zone and I also want to be braver with colour in my work.
Reading about Viktorija's experience in University and not really learning how to be an Illustrator in the real world was good for me, as it is something that is rarely talked about. Making money from your work is quite a 'taboo' topic that know one ever really brings up and discusses openly, from this module I am now a lot more comfortable in realising that I can make a living from what I love doing and seeing Viktorija being successful in the creative industry is a real boost!
You can read more about her work on her Blog and follow along on her creative journey on Instagram.
No comments:
Post a Comment