Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants' ethereal illustrations play with form and shadow
Brooklyn-based illustrator and designer Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants describes her style as ethereal yet solid. "There is a lot of play with how solid and heavy the objects and figures look and how soft and immaterial the space they are in is," she explains. “I think the real line of passage in my work is the intimacy between people and objects. I also love using tangents to emphasize the tension of intimate moments. "
Often playing with lights and shadows and a pleasant mix of pastel tones, Gullbrants says that every illustration begins with handwritten lists and notes to help support the conceptual side of things. "When I work on editorial illustration, I read through the story by pulling out different symbols or relationships and trying to translate those different facets of the piece," she says. “Then I make a few rough pencil thumbnails out of my written notes for general composition. From there, I do the entire illustration digitally. "
Above: The perfect travel partner for New York Times Magazine's The Decameron Project. Above: For Sayaka Murata, nonconformity is a slippery slope for the New York Times. All pictures: Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants
Gullbrants has been using Photoshop to create her images for a year. Often 50 to over 100 clipping mask layers with shadows and lights are used. "At some point, with thousands of clicks and small movements, I got all of my illustrations done on the trackpad, but then I got a carpal tunnel and had to retrain myself to work on a tablet like any healthy person should," she says.
Gullbrants says she fell in love with illustration after studying with American illustrator Barron Storey at California College of the Arts one summer. "Barron is a brilliant illustrator and educator whose career has spanned everything from graphic novels to book covers to technical illustration for NASA," says Gullbrants. “I was so excited about the idea of illustration as an accessible visual communication that is never tied to any particular medium or form. While my current portfolio consists entirely of digital illustrations, I love working on ceramics, animation, and puppet shows. I hope that one day I can build a portfolio in all of these directions that has the same heart and voice. "
Grounding, personal
The career of creative professionals in freelance illustration is relatively new, having received one of their first ever freelance appearances from Art Director Dora Godfrey at Elemental in March. This created a ripple effect for Gullbrants and she has now created work for clients such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, Refinery29, Bloomberg Businessweek and many more.
But this illustration work complements her day-to-day work as a designer for Dame Products, a women-run company that makes sophisticated sex toys. “I do my best to mix both full-time design and freelance illustration work. At the end of the day, I spend a lot of my nights and weekends illustrating because there are always customer work that really inspires me, ”says Gullbrants. "After doing both for almost a year, I'm just getting better at setting boundaries for myself and trying to make room for exploring more personal work."
At Dame Products, Gullbrants is responsible for all of the company's creative output, working on everything from vibrator packaging design to social media graphics to managing the visuals on his sex and relationship blog Swell. “Working on Swell is perhaps my favorite part because I am able to both illustrate and work directly while working with freelance illustrators,” she says. "Working on both sides of the process – illustrating and directing – has given me a better understanding of what each role needs."
The heartbreaking struggle to stay sober under Elemental
The pros and cons of water sex for swell
This is especially handy when you're working on editorial assignments that Gullbrants believes will remove much of the ego from the art process. "It will be a collaborative form of storytelling between the writer, the art director, and the illustrator," she says. “For me, editorial illustration is always based on the goal of expanding the author's story and using images to control the reader's emotional understanding of a written work. I really look forward to working on stories that speak to my own experience or identity, as well as stories that steer the nuances of human emotions. "
With commission rates soaring, one of Gullbrant's concerns is not having room to grow. "I'm really grateful that the work keeps coming back, but sometimes things seem to go so quickly that I take pictures in a kind of standard mode without taking any risks," she says.
From teaching the healing practice of the act to recording how to deal with changes to illustrating the challenges of the Covid vaccine, the work of Gullbrants is diverse, but united in the calming use of color and light so that the viewer can lose himself in it Job.
How to deal with everything changing for the New York Times
The screen and health debate is more controversial than ever for Elemental
The healing practice of doing acts during quarantine for swell
Twins for Swell
sophigullbrants.com