Illustrator, writer, and mum of 3, Stacie Swift, want’s you to know that you–yes you!–are positively awesome. A half-glass-full kinda person, Swift is known for her uplifting illustrations – a combination of hand-drawn images and type. By combining her bright, eye-popping artwork with relatable and honest captions, she has managed to gain quite an audience online, with more than 230k fans on Instagram alone.
“I’d like to think that my sentimental nature and sense of humor come across in my work so hopefully they are representative of those elements of my personality,” said Swift in an interview with The Smuggler. “When I was very little I wanted to be a hot dog lady,” she admitted. “Then I wanted to be a journalist. Then a lingerie designer. I hadn’t even considered illustration as an option until I was almost 20 and when I was 23 that I went back to study illustration.”
Her meandering journey landed her where she is today. But when it comes to the work itself, it’s pretty straight forward, beginning, like always, with a piece of paper. “All of my work starts out as a rough idea in a sketchbook or on a loose sheet of paper,” she explained her creative process. “Scribbled roughs are usually followed by some internet research for image references from which I begin to make pencil drawings. When I am happy with those I reproduce a final version of the drawing in black fineliner and scan the images into Photoshop to color, edit and compose my finished artwork.”
Here are some of the finished results:
