Veerle's blog

After our trip to South America the travel budget is low so we look for talent closer to home :)

My name is Irene Maria Jacobs, born in 1969 in the Netherlands and currently living and working in Rotterdam. I decided to study fashion Illustration at Art-school St Joost in Breda in the Netherlands. During my period of practical training I went to Germany to get some work experience in an advertising agency. In 1996 I moved to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and developed my Illustration skills. At that time I was inspired by Japanese art, manga comics and the Designers Republic.

It takes pure talent to achieve this level of quality work. She adapts to many styles, always so perfect and pure. Every illustration is a true piece of art and you can tell by looking at them that hours of work have been spent on each one of them. She is a gem, a true illustration talent. Irene is one of the illustrators that is in my favorite short list.

What inspires you?

I am inspired  by everything I see and hear and feel I guess. Lot's of things in life are so beautiful and astonishing. To name a few, birds their colors the color combinations are simply perfect..music..flowers, insects well nature is a big inspiration, but I always look for new ways to express that energy you feel al the time allthrough your live, and for that I use the internet, fashion sites like style.com, designstuff on sites like newstoday.

 

I go to the library and borrow all the books I can find about the subject I have to work on, I love movies, animations fantasy anything. There is a filmfveryear here in Rotterdam which has a lot of great new stuff. I think finding inspiration is one of the best parts of the job, because there is so much you can find once you start looking and it will never get boring.

You have different illustration styles, do you have an absolute favorite one? Or do you base the style on the client's request?

I don't have a favorite one, that would probably be the jobs that I can do without any worries. Because there is a lot of time. I like to learn and I like to be satisfied with the illustration. My work is for different clients all the time, and most of the time they work for clients as well. A lot of opinions and tastes and expectations. We all have to be flexible, and we all try to find a way to understand each other in a short time. That has a lot to do with trust and being open to all the possibilities and pick the right solution for every job. The illustrations that are not very appealing are sometimes the hardest and the ones that I am most proud of because they are my first steps in to a complete new direction.

Do you first sketch your illustrations on paper? Can you reveal a bit of your usual technical process? Which applications do you mainly use?

Yes, I find that it is better for many reasons. I worked in illustrator a lot, and if you think and sketch in illustrator you work behind that computer 12 hours a day, the points and curves keep you awake at night and you really go nuts. Once everything is neat and clean and you zoom out and you see that you lost track of the original composition and the magic is gone. I sketch now, scan and adjust in Photoshop, because I am a terrible drawer, on the screen I can see what I did wrong. After that I print and sketch again, or paint and scan structures or import the sketch in Illustrator. I use all the tools and features to make a better Illu. The way I do it depends on the job. Weather they need an Illustrator file because they want to make a big print or if they want another style.

Do you see your Mac or PC as the necessary evil or as invaluable tool?

Invaluable tool for me.

Did the Internet influence your work?

Yes of course my work and my life in many ways. It's my contact with the world outside, my source of information, my way to communicate.

More examples at Irene's site I'm JAC.