It’s All Fun and Games with Gosia Herba

With over 10 years of experience, and close to 50k followers on Instagram, illustrator Gosia Herba is a force to be reckoned with, publishing children’s books and graphic novels, on top of more commercial work for publishers, magazines, music labels, and ad agencies.

With earlier work more detailed and realistic, her recent style is much simpler, based on synthesis and abstraction. “I aim to create colorful, bold compositions based on geometrization and simplification of forms,” Herba remarked once in an interview with Sense of Creativity.

A lot of the times her choice of color is restricted to reds and blues, explaining that blue has many shades and nuances to it. “It has a great potential,” she explains. “I like to oppose bluish tones with other colors. Each combination gives a different mood.”

But though her choice of color and composition is measured, Herba’s subject matters vary – from the absurd to the mundane. Inspired by Gothic painting and medieval sacral sculpture, she also very much admires the color and composition in Japanese prints and raves about contemporary comic art. “My hobby is cultural anthropology, iconography,” she adds. “I read a lot of stories about humans, their rituals and practices which are often weird and funny. So I guess human culture is my greatest source of inspiration.”

“I would like to tell you how great the life of an illustrator really is,” she stresses. “Every day brings new adventures. Even during very busy periods, it’s like a pleasant play. I draw and laugh mostly. It’s so much fun.”

Won’t you join her on Instagram?