“Most of the time I work with commercial brands that are mainly related to design, fashion and lifestyle, that have ideas and projects that I connect and relate to,” she added in an interview with Sense of Creativity. Fascinated by the world of fashion and textile, as well as its combination with art and illustration, her illustrations tend to center around female characters.

This is a conscious choice, which Ziv ties with her ideology. “As a feminist woman and creator, when I can choose – I’d rather choose to represent women (and men) that are based on beauty models that are different and varied,” she explains. “For example, using different skin and hair colors and body types.”

Inspired by architecture as well as children’s books, Ziv hopes to write and illustrate a children’s book herself someday. “As long as my memory goes back, I was always sketching and drawing,” she recalls. “When I grew up I realized that if there was something that came to me as easily and naturally as painting, then maybe I should do something with it.”

Follow her creative journey through Instagram:

The post The Fashionable Women of Yali Ziv appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her elegant drawings and watercolors are recognized for their simplicity and color choice – mainly blue – with her distinctive style attracting a variety of commercial clients and individuals. Hussain has also exhibited her more personal pieces at galleries and art events around London, on top of her noteworthy online presence, with almost 10k fans on Instagram alone.

According to her website, her inspiration comes from everyday life – anything from the patterns of home interiors to the natural shapes of the outdoors and the geometries of architecture. Working in several different media, usually at night, she is driven by experimentation, constantly exploring new techniques and searching for the shapes and subjects they express best. 

Often, her work includes elements that appear incomplete – a bird reduced to an outline or a face with an absent feature – obliging the viewer to pause and engage with the artwork, filling in the absences themselves rather than just dismissing it and moving on. In other words: her creations are well worth a closer look.

The post Laxmi Hussain Explores Her Blues appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her paintings are very much based on dreams, personal experiences and personality conflicts between the authentic self, taught mannerism and projected morality. Bright and glossy, Johanna’s use of color is striking, treating color and form as a sort of metaphor (“an allegory in tones,” she calls it).

“I don’t want them to fall flat or be just pretty, I want life in them and experiences because that is what makes people interesting,” she explains, talking about the ways her characters are portrayed on canvas. “But whatever the viewer feels I feel is completely up to them, although a lot of people feel a connection to these paintings and see something of themselves in them. And it is women and men that feel that connection.”

Born and raised in Gelderland, the Netherlands, Johanna has studied at ArtEZ the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem, obtaining a Bachelor’s degree and a Masters’s degree. Her work has been exhibited since in multiple solo shows in the Netherlands, Europe, and the United States, but you can also follow her art online, via Instagram:

The post The Glossy, Fashionable Women of Martine Johanna appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Getting a nose job is something I have debated since I realized it was possible, aged 11,” she wrote in a now-iconic piece for the Evening Standard. “I’ve imagined my face with a smaller nose and the life that would go along with it: more confidence, more friends and more dates. But I never went through with it, even when my mum offered to pay for the surgery when I was 17. I was too scared. […] I couldn’t bear the thought of having a new nose and then realizing the problem wasn’t my nose; it was me.”

“And then suddenly, this year, everything changed,” she added, candidly. “It hit me that this one insecurity had been ruling my life for 27 years. It had held me back from living my life to the fullest, to the point at which I almost turned down TV appearances to promote my work as a journalist and author because the camera would capture my face side-on. I knew I had to face my fears. So, after weeks of anxiety, I took my first-ever side profile selfie and posted it on social media with the hashtag #sideprofileselfie. ‘I’m breaking the big-nose taboo,’ I wrote. ‘Join me.”’ 

A couple of years passed but the movement isn’t showing signs of slowing down. In fact, it spread so quickly that within hours it was written about on hundreds of websites around the world, from the United States to Australia. “It has now reached millions, and more than 10,000 men and women have sent me their selfies, all with messages I completely relate to,” writes Sanghani. “It showed them an alternative view: that big noses could be beautiful and not something to be hidden or fixed by surgery.”

PREACH!

The post Radhika Sanghani Wants You to Love Every Inch of Your Big Nose appeared first on PlayJunkie.

A couple of years later, and the t-shirt turned into The Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign – a female-powered organization that brings awareness to social causes, supporting a wide range of initiatives. According to their website, by getting the official Phenomenal Woman t-shirt, you’re not only making a bold statement in support of women everywhere, but you’re also supporting the critical work that’s being done for women’s rights on the ground by fearless organizations every day. 

“I thought I was going to create 20 or so shirts and send them off with my friends,” admitted Harris in an interview with Shape. But then, the Women’s March happened, and the simple t-shirt gained traction. “Instead of saying ‘ok, we hit our goal, let me go back to my regular life,’ I thought ‘holy cow, I have to keep growing this, right? We’re really onto something here,'” she recalled thinking. “Turning what I think was this moment of despair and what was really scary for a lot of people into a moment of celebration and of lifting women up, and of saying that women are resilient and phenomenal in their own individual ways and, together, we can get through this—that’s really what inspired me to commit to this long-term.”

And so, she went from one month to a three-month pilot, during which time she ended up selling over 10,000 shirts. “And here I am now, over two and a half years later, talking about it,” she says. “I never thought that it would be anything bigger than one month.”

Follow her impressive campaign on Instagram:

The post What Happens When You Add Feminism to Fashion? The Phenomenal Woman appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Inspired by nature, female beauty, plants, and eastern cultures, her illustrations mostly consist of female figures, surrounded by floral ornaments. “Inspiration literally accompanies me everywhere,” she told I Love Illustration. “I love my work so much that it’s enough for me to wake up early in the morning, to make coffee, to turn on the music and off you go… There are no special attributes of my inspiration, ideas are born from what I see around me, in nature, in books, on TV, in magazines.”

Her toolbox includes acrylic and watercolors, oil paints and digital helpers. According to Ignatiadou, creating an illustration is not unlike meditating – the process is more important than the result. “At the moment I’m working intuitively and all the illustrations that I create are rather an emotion that I try to show,” she shared. “I like to work in a calm, relaxed state, so I do not hurry to release one work per day. It usually takes quite a long time to develop a sketch and to choose the color scheme.”

Her advice to other aspiring artists: “trust your inner voice and your personal power.” Take a look at some of her powerful creations:

The post Sasha Ignatiadou’s Illustrations Feature Fearless Women appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I cover a lot of topics and themes but generally they’re all centered around women and women’s health,” she told Inky Goodness. “As someone who has struggled with body image and the female body I want to share my experiences and shine a new light on certain topics such as body hair and body image.”

Having studied Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University, she currently runs an illustration business from home and works as a graphic designer at a publishing company. “I would love to work solely for myself and be a full-time illustrator and ceramicist,” she admits. “I also hope to have a small studio where I can teach a few workshops.”

Rosi’s Instagram page (which amassed quite the following) mostly features her more personal projects. Those include behind the scenes photos of her ceramics work at various stages of progression. “I think Instagram stories is a great way to communicate with your audience,” she says. “It enables you to ask questions directly and take polls without your audience having to do much. As well as this, it’s great for sharing other people’s work and more personal parts of your day that maybe you don’t want to keep on your feed.”

We highly recommend you follow her work:

The post Rosi Teaches Body Positivity Through Her Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Alessandra Genualdo

Illustrator and painter, Alessandra Genualdo, is known for her striking women portraits. They are intertwined with natural motifs like flowers and leaves. Her subjects often stare directly forward, making for an uneasy effect, as their gaze seems to linger on. “The female figure is a big source of inspiration,” Genualdo shared with Creative Boom. “Many of the works I produce have been influenced by what surrounds me, my memories, women I have met, so can be considered a metaphorical reinterpretation of reality,” she added.

Stephanie DeAngelis

Los Angeles based illustrator, Stephanie DeAngelis, wants to remind women to take a breather, because – let’s face it – life can be rough and we all deserve a break. Her playful illustrations portray women going about doing their thing. One is seen stretching, while another enjoys a bowl of noodles. “My personal work comes from a passion for storytelling and aims to accurately portray women and the female form within art,” DeAngelis writes on her website.

Laci Jordan

Laci Jordan’s digital illustrations are bold, vibrant, and unapologetic. And so are her women subjects. “I tend to work in a few different spaces, from streetwear to activism, and there are different challenges in each space,” she shared in an interview with Create & Cultivate. “Common challenges are equality in both pay and opportunities. I also hear people say that they can’t find women artists or artists of color when recruiting; leading to another challenge in visibility — I’ve heard this a TON in the corporate space. Good thing it’s platforms like Women Who Draw and Women Illustrators of Color that give a directory of dope artists.”

The post Three Illustrators Who are All About Girl Power appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Later, however, I have returned to use the oil again in my work, thus producing a mutually enriching dialogue between the two techniques,” the artist shared on his personal website. “I have been living on the Costa Brava since 1987, a luminous and peaceful setting on the Mediterranean for my studio. It is certainly this luminosity one of the features that prevails in my art.”

If you are interested to see his sensual art, check out his Instagram page or have a look at his website. Which painting is your favorite?

The post Check Out These Beautiful, Sensual Paintings by Vicente Romero Redondo appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“It’s easier to draw what you know,” explained the French artist in an interview with wertn. “So when I want to illustrate an emotion, it’s natural for me to portray it in a way that looks like me: a woman. That seems more realistic to me. I had a complex about my body for a long time, and drawing women has been a kind of way out of that. I also find women bodies easier to draw, I like their curves. Men have more angles, it’s harder for me to represent them.”

“I used to draw women looking very different and dressing very differently but I am now more interested in emotions and very minimalist images,” she added. “My personal emotions are very linked to my paintings and my characters can look a bit like me.”

She also tattoos some of her work. “I started tattooing my friends for fun and posted it on my Instagram,” she said. “Unknowns then started to want a tattoo as well. That was a bit crazy.”

Take a look at some of her work below.

The post These Fine Line Illustrations Are Simple, Yet Effective appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Most of the time I work with commercial brands that are mainly related to design, fashion and lifestyle, that have ideas and projects that I connect and relate to,” she added in an interview with Sense of Creativity. Fascinated by the world of fashion and textile, as well as its combination with art and illustration, her illustrations tend to center around female characters.

This is a conscious choice, which Ziv ties with her ideology. “As a feminist woman and creator, when I can choose – I’d rather choose to represent women (and men) that are based on beauty models that are different and varied,” she explains. “For example, using different skin and hair colors and body types.”

Inspired by architecture as well as children’s books, Ziv hopes to write and illustrate a children’s book herself someday. “As long as my memory goes back, I was always sketching and drawing,” she recalls. “When I grew up I realized that if there was something that came to me as easily and naturally as painting, then maybe I should do something with it.”

Follow her creative journey through Instagram:

The post The Fashionable Women of Yali Ziv appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her elegant drawings and watercolors are recognized for their simplicity and color choice – mainly blue – with her distinctive style attracting a variety of commercial clients and individuals. Hussain has also exhibited her more personal pieces at galleries and art events around London, on top of her noteworthy online presence, with almost 10k fans on Instagram alone.

According to her website, her inspiration comes from everyday life – anything from the patterns of home interiors to the natural shapes of the outdoors and the geometries of architecture. Working in several different media, usually at night, she is driven by experimentation, constantly exploring new techniques and searching for the shapes and subjects they express best. 

Often, her work includes elements that appear incomplete – a bird reduced to an outline or a face with an absent feature – obliging the viewer to pause and engage with the artwork, filling in the absences themselves rather than just dismissing it and moving on. In other words: her creations are well worth a closer look.

The post Laxmi Hussain Explores Her Blues appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her paintings are very much based on dreams, personal experiences and personality conflicts between the authentic self, taught mannerism and projected morality. Bright and glossy, Johanna’s use of color is striking, treating color and form as a sort of metaphor (“an allegory in tones,” she calls it).

“I don’t want them to fall flat or be just pretty, I want life in them and experiences because that is what makes people interesting,” she explains, talking about the ways her characters are portrayed on canvas. “But whatever the viewer feels I feel is completely up to them, although a lot of people feel a connection to these paintings and see something of themselves in them. And it is women and men that feel that connection.”

Born and raised in Gelderland, the Netherlands, Johanna has studied at ArtEZ the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem, obtaining a Bachelor’s degree and a Masters’s degree. Her work has been exhibited since in multiple solo shows in the Netherlands, Europe, and the United States, but you can also follow her art online, via Instagram:

The post The Glossy, Fashionable Women of Martine Johanna appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Getting a nose job is something I have debated since I realized it was possible, aged 11,” she wrote in a now-iconic piece for the Evening Standard. “I’ve imagined my face with a smaller nose and the life that would go along with it: more confidence, more friends and more dates. But I never went through with it, even when my mum offered to pay for the surgery when I was 17. I was too scared. […] I couldn’t bear the thought of having a new nose and then realizing the problem wasn’t my nose; it was me.”

“And then suddenly, this year, everything changed,” she added, candidly. “It hit me that this one insecurity had been ruling my life for 27 years. It had held me back from living my life to the fullest, to the point at which I almost turned down TV appearances to promote my work as a journalist and author because the camera would capture my face side-on. I knew I had to face my fears. So, after weeks of anxiety, I took my first-ever side profile selfie and posted it on social media with the hashtag #sideprofileselfie. ‘I’m breaking the big-nose taboo,’ I wrote. ‘Join me.”’ 

A couple of years passed but the movement isn’t showing signs of slowing down. In fact, it spread so quickly that within hours it was written about on hundreds of websites around the world, from the United States to Australia. “It has now reached millions, and more than 10,000 men and women have sent me their selfies, all with messages I completely relate to,” writes Sanghani. “It showed them an alternative view: that big noses could be beautiful and not something to be hidden or fixed by surgery.”

PREACH!

The post Radhika Sanghani Wants You to Love Every Inch of Your Big Nose appeared first on PlayJunkie.

A couple of years later, and the t-shirt turned into The Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign – a female-powered organization that brings awareness to social causes, supporting a wide range of initiatives. According to their website, by getting the official Phenomenal Woman t-shirt, you’re not only making a bold statement in support of women everywhere, but you’re also supporting the critical work that’s being done for women’s rights on the ground by fearless organizations every day. 

“I thought I was going to create 20 or so shirts and send them off with my friends,” admitted Harris in an interview with Shape. But then, the Women’s March happened, and the simple t-shirt gained traction. “Instead of saying ‘ok, we hit our goal, let me go back to my regular life,’ I thought ‘holy cow, I have to keep growing this, right? We’re really onto something here,'” she recalled thinking. “Turning what I think was this moment of despair and what was really scary for a lot of people into a moment of celebration and of lifting women up, and of saying that women are resilient and phenomenal in their own individual ways and, together, we can get through this—that’s really what inspired me to commit to this long-term.”

And so, she went from one month to a three-month pilot, during which time she ended up selling over 10,000 shirts. “And here I am now, over two and a half years later, talking about it,” she says. “I never thought that it would be anything bigger than one month.”

Follow her impressive campaign on Instagram:

The post What Happens When You Add Feminism to Fashion? The Phenomenal Woman appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Inspired by nature, female beauty, plants, and eastern cultures, her illustrations mostly consist of female figures, surrounded by floral ornaments. “Inspiration literally accompanies me everywhere,” she told I Love Illustration. “I love my work so much that it’s enough for me to wake up early in the morning, to make coffee, to turn on the music and off you go… There are no special attributes of my inspiration, ideas are born from what I see around me, in nature, in books, on TV, in magazines.”

Her toolbox includes acrylic and watercolors, oil paints and digital helpers. According to Ignatiadou, creating an illustration is not unlike meditating – the process is more important than the result. “At the moment I’m working intuitively and all the illustrations that I create are rather an emotion that I try to show,” she shared. “I like to work in a calm, relaxed state, so I do not hurry to release one work per day. It usually takes quite a long time to develop a sketch and to choose the color scheme.”

Her advice to other aspiring artists: “trust your inner voice and your personal power.” Take a look at some of her powerful creations:

The post Sasha Ignatiadou’s Illustrations Feature Fearless Women appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“I cover a lot of topics and themes but generally they’re all centered around women and women’s health,” she told Inky Goodness. “As someone who has struggled with body image and the female body I want to share my experiences and shine a new light on certain topics such as body hair and body image.”

Having studied Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University, she currently runs an illustration business from home and works as a graphic designer at a publishing company. “I would love to work solely for myself and be a full-time illustrator and ceramicist,” she admits. “I also hope to have a small studio where I can teach a few workshops.”

Rosi’s Instagram page (which amassed quite the following) mostly features her more personal projects. Those include behind the scenes photos of her ceramics work at various stages of progression. “I think Instagram stories is a great way to communicate with your audience,” she says. “It enables you to ask questions directly and take polls without your audience having to do much. As well as this, it’s great for sharing other people’s work and more personal parts of your day that maybe you don’t want to keep on your feed.”

We highly recommend you follow her work:

The post Rosi Teaches Body Positivity Through Her Art appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Alessandra Genualdo

Illustrator and painter, Alessandra Genualdo, is known for her striking women portraits. They are intertwined with natural motifs like flowers and leaves. Her subjects often stare directly forward, making for an uneasy effect, as their gaze seems to linger on. “The female figure is a big source of inspiration,” Genualdo shared with Creative Boom. “Many of the works I produce have been influenced by what surrounds me, my memories, women I have met, so can be considered a metaphorical reinterpretation of reality,” she added.

Stephanie DeAngelis

Los Angeles based illustrator, Stephanie DeAngelis, wants to remind women to take a breather, because – let’s face it – life can be rough and we all deserve a break. Her playful illustrations portray women going about doing their thing. One is seen stretching, while another enjoys a bowl of noodles. “My personal work comes from a passion for storytelling and aims to accurately portray women and the female form within art,” DeAngelis writes on her website.

Laci Jordan

Laci Jordan’s digital illustrations are bold, vibrant, and unapologetic. And so are her women subjects. “I tend to work in a few different spaces, from streetwear to activism, and there are different challenges in each space,” she shared in an interview with Create & Cultivate. “Common challenges are equality in both pay and opportunities. I also hear people say that they can’t find women artists or artists of color when recruiting; leading to another challenge in visibility — I’ve heard this a TON in the corporate space. Good thing it’s platforms like Women Who Draw and Women Illustrators of Color that give a directory of dope artists.”

The post Three Illustrators Who are All About Girl Power appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Later, however, I have returned to use the oil again in my work, thus producing a mutually enriching dialogue between the two techniques,” the artist shared on his personal website. “I have been living on the Costa Brava since 1987, a luminous and peaceful setting on the Mediterranean for my studio. It is certainly this luminosity one of the features that prevails in my art.”

If you are interested to see his sensual art, check out his Instagram page or have a look at his website. Which painting is your favorite?

The post Check Out These Beautiful, Sensual Paintings by Vicente Romero Redondo appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“It’s easier to draw what you know,” explained the French artist in an interview with wertn. “So when I want to illustrate an emotion, it’s natural for me to portray it in a way that looks like me: a woman. That seems more realistic to me. I had a complex about my body for a long time, and drawing women has been a kind of way out of that. I also find women bodies easier to draw, I like their curves. Men have more angles, it’s harder for me to represent them.”

“I used to draw women looking very different and dressing very differently but I am now more interested in emotions and very minimalist images,” she added. “My personal emotions are very linked to my paintings and my characters can look a bit like me.”

She also tattoos some of her work. “I started tattooing my friends for fun and posted it on my Instagram,” she said. “Unknowns then started to want a tattoo as well. That was a bit crazy.”

Take a look at some of her work below.

The post These Fine Line Illustrations Are Simple, Yet Effective appeared first on PlayJunkie.