Illustrator Paulina Kwietniewska established her brand, About Face Illustration, when on maternity leave with her first child in March 2016. “I set up About Face Illustration when my daughter was about five months old,” she relayed in an interview with the Printed blog. “Sadly, I didn’t know much about marketing at the time, but I was on Instagram and I was following some other mums. One day, I noticed that one of the mums I followed was looking for an illustrator to paint her and her son, so I volunteered.”
After that first illustration, more and more commissions followed through. “Two months later it basically became my full-time job- and 3 years and 500 portraits later, here I am,” said Kwietniewska.
Now a respectable brand, with little over 10k followers on Instagram, Kwietniewska makes both commissioned portraits as well as other paintings and illustrations, using a variety of mediums, including watercolors, oils, and ink.
“Most of my work comes from within really,” she admits. “But I am easily inspired, I recently went to the BP Portrait Awards and I all I wanted to do was go home and paint. I also love literature. I adore Nabokov’s Lolita, which I had the pleasure to paint recently. Also, I paint quite a lot from my experience.”
A creative at heart, her artwork (both personal and commercial) is shared through Instagram.
