Comic artist and illustrator Sarah Maxwell is known for her pastel-hued illustrations, colored in baby pink and blue. Drawn to flowers and anything delicate, she describes her work using the four following words: nostalgia, tenderness, femininity, and 80’s electronic music.
Talking with Booooooom about the process of becoming a full-time illustrator she admitted to spending a lot of time after graduating trying to develop her work and fine-tuning her style.
“Not long after did I start seeing features of my work, and got a wave of emails asking for interviews,” she said. “A lot of clients starting coming to me directly asking for commissions, due to this spotlight from media and a large Instagram following. I’ve been really fortunate because even from the beginning I’ve always had a large workflow coming in, so freelancing was easy for me to pick up.”
Indeed, with more than 58k followers and clients that include Adidas, Buzzfeed, and The New York Times, there’s no shortage of work for Maxwell. But though she is recognized by her distinct pastel color palette, she says her style has fluidity to it and depends on the client.
“My audience know me more by my color choice of pastel pink and blue, and a lot of the time people request it for commissions so even those pieces look like they’re in the same universe as the one I created,” she relayed. “Most of the time everything fits a certain aesthetic but recently I’ve been posting things that I’m experimenting with that are different. I know there are people that benefit from sticking to a strict aesthetic, but I’m not afraid to explore options and interests and seeing how my audience reacts to it.”
Check out some of our favorite illustrations by her in the gallery below.
