Alice Lee

Alice Lee is an illustrator based in San Francisco, she works out of Lavender Labs which is a shared studio where her and other well known artists collaborate and work together. I was immediately struck by her opening paragraph on her About Page which read, ‘I want to create work with heart, purpose, and originality’, I thought this statement was very honest and a great way to work as an artist. I love how she has branded herself and I think that you can tell that is her intentions though the artwork that she produces!

I was scrolling through her website and immediately I was attracted to the animated illustration of am dog at the corner of the webpage with its tail wagging, I thought this was a fun effect! As I kept reading and scrolling I noticed she had an impressive list of ‘Selected Clients’ and she has worked with a number of well known brands and companies such as Adobe, Airbnb and Apple!

I have included images below of some of my favourite Alice Lee illustrations.

Lee included the above illustration on Illustration page on her website and when I hovered my mouse over the illustration it began to move, this made the image appear to be 3D which I found very cool! I really liked the interactive feel this gave and this effect is something I definitely want to experiment with in the future and learn how to achieve that type of animation.

The piece above is called ‘Jellyfish Hopping’ and I included it because I just love the playfulness in this illustration, it is very free flowing and carefree. I have noticed I have selected pieces with very similar colour palettes (not on purpose), perhaps I am attracted to these particular tones when it comes to illustration?

Airbnb Project

The piece above was an dvertising project called Nova for Airbnb, she wanted to create a story of a celestial traveller. Her illustrations remind me of dreams, it is as if I am in another world. I would like to try out her illustration style as I am very drawn to the whimsical atmosphere she creates. What I really liked about looking at Alice Lee’s work is that she reveals her initial sketch concept ideas for most of her illustrations, I thought this was great and so beneficial as I got to see the majority of the process of the illustrations from start to finish. She does this with most of her projects on her website, I have never seen that done before and I think it’s brilliant that I get to see her initial thoughts and composition ideas!

What did I learn?

I learned that even the best illustrators have to start out with a number of different concepts, ideas and sketches in order to reach their desired end result, the process is the most important part and I benefitted a lot from researching this particular illustrator. I learned a lot for Alice Lee as I was able to see her process and how she creates her artworks, and as well as that she actually talks about the process and explains her thoughts at the side of the her sketches, which is a lovely personal touch.  I will definitely refer back to Alice Lee and her great website in the near future to help me develop as a designer and illustrator.