For illustrator Tessa M. de Graaf, fashion is as much about creating a certain feeling or atmosphere than about the clothes themselves. Using ink, watercolor, paint, crayons, and pencils, her loose illustrations manage to capture the dynamic spirit of the fashion world.
“I like to color outside the lines,” admitted de Graaf in an interview with I Love Illustration. “I don’t sketch with a pencil; I just create lots of silhouettes or faces with watercolor/ ink directly on paper.” “I focus on simplicity, less is more,” she went on to say. “I prefer working with my hands and don’t want to sit in front of a computer all day.”
Born in a small village in the North of the Netherlands, she moved to Amsterdam at the age of 18 to study fashion. “When I went to the academy, fashion drawing and figure drawing were my favorite subjects,” she says. After an internship at Cosmopolitan Magazine, she had a short stint as a freelance stylist. “But Illustrating was what I loved most so after a few years of styling I decided to change course and started working as an illustrator,” she says.
Now based in Alkmaar, her work includes collaborations with brands like AvantGarde, Viva, Elegance, Libelle, and Margriet. Here are some highlights from her Instagram page.