Illustrator Marijke Buurlage is hard at work. Her work includes editorial illustrations for magazines, children’s books, book covers, posters, apps, and e-books. But she also loves working on self-initiated side-projects, focused mainly on animals and botanicals.
Based in the Netherlands, she’s worked as a freelance illustrator since graduating from Minerva Academy Groningen. Each of her projects begins with a hand-drawn sketch. “I combine analog and digital work for everything I make,” she told The Monster Project. “I first draw everything by hand with a brush and black ink, and then I arrange all elements in Photoshop and color everything digitally. This works perfectly for me because I like both the roughness of hand-drawn details and the comfort of digital working and being able to make changes easily.”
Vibrant, light-hearted, and playful, her illustrations stand out thanks to her bold color choices. “I take lots of pictures of cool color combinations (my last one was of a red onion with a baby blue potato peeler while cooking dinner), and I experiment with the use colors a lot,” says Buurlage. “I think that actually takes up most of my time while working on something new – determining what colors I should use to make the artwork look perfect!”
Follow her Instagram page for a pop of color in your feed.
