Ellen's Illustrations

I'm an illustrator from Belgium, specialising mainly in children's book illustrations, but also pattern design and editorial work. If you would like to cooperate, or you would like a custom illustration for a birth announcement card or something else, drop me a line: [email protected]

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I am aching for some more green in my life, so I more or less want to envelope myself in plants at the moment. I have a slight feeling this illustration is going to take a while though 😉 #illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts #natureinspired

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For a wedding card, I drew the first mermaids I ever drew. Two at once, even, AND! it also happens to be #mermay now. What are the odds 😊#illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts

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A little sneak peek of what's on my desk now. I don't have a lot of time to read lately, but books do find their way into my work 😊#illustration #illustrator #booklove #ellenlambrichts

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Experimenting with a partly new technique. I would of course never part with my trusty colored pencils, but I am experimenting with adding pastel to them, for smoother backgrounds. I did enjoy doing this quick portrait of the ever inspiring Tilda Swinton 😊 #illustration #illustrator #portrait #ellenlambrichts

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Spring is in the air, and it seems that was my cue for sketching birds and flowers. I will show more soon! #illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts #linework

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I got asked to illustrate a card for the Boekenkaravaan that was going to be sent as a thank you card to their volunteers, who go read books to underprivileged children, to help them with their language skills, and to show them how wonderful books can be. I chose to draw what they would see when looking up from the book they are reading, because I imagine those children's happy faces are the best reward 😊#illustration #illustrator #lovebooks #ellenlambrichts

[ellenillustrates]

And here is the close-up of the cat pattern I promised to show you all. It is now available as fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap here: www.motiflow.com/designers/EllenLambrichts Woop woop! #illustration #fabricdesign #gingercats #ellenlambrichts

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Perfect thing to do on a Sunday. Who, oh who will win the game 😊#illustration #illustrator #playinganimals #ellenlambrichts

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Sleeping ginger cats everywhere! My cat-pattern now is available as wallpaper, fabric and gift wrap on Motiflow 😊Who would like cats on their walls? https://www.motiflow.com/designers/EllenLambrichts #illustration #wallpaperdesign #ellenlambrichts #gingercats

[ellenillustrates]

I read somewhere that today is international polar bear day. Even if it isn't, I am sharing these, as polar bears deserve to be in the centre of attention more often. May they have lots of ice to play on for a very long time to come! #illustration #polarbearday #illustrator #ellenlambrichts

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And I almost forgot to post the girly version of the babyalbum I made for the #portfoliochallenge2018 @byjohannafritz . I'm not that into typical gender colors, so I tried to give the baby pink and the baby blue a little twist. #illustrator #childrensillustration #ellenlambrichts

[ellenillustrates]

Finished my babyalbum designs for the #portfoliochallenge2028 @byjohannafritz . This is the boy-version. I'll share the girl-version later, and maybe I'll try to make a mock-up too. #illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts

[ellenillustrates]

Painting piffy penguins today for the #portfoliochallenge2018 from @byjohannafritz Not finished yet, but I'll get there soon! #illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts

[ellenillustrates]

I have been quiet for a couple of days, but that's because I was invited to this party deep in the woods. You don't see me in this picture because I was the one drawing everyone of course 😊 I think I'll make a colored version of this one later on too. #illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts #childrensillustration

[ellenillustrates]

I've decided that if I can't grow plants in soil yet, I can grow them on paper 😊So I've grown some colorful poppies in my sketchbook today 🌺#illustration #illustrator #ellenlambrichts #botanicalillustration

[ellenillustrates]

editorial illustration for the Covent Gardener

I have been meaning to blog more regularly about my work and process for a while now, but it was something I easily forgot. BUT! This time I took blogging into account when I made my planning for 2018, so I hope to be able to publish a little blogpost every two weeks on monday, starting with this on

New blog post! If you are curious about how my illustrations come about, from first contact to finished work, then do hop over to my blog! I plan to publish a new blogpost every two weeks from now on. Are there any subjects you would like me to write about in my blog? Would you like to hear more about my process or see process videos, tutorials, the tools I use, or a peek into my life as an illustrator? Or would you like me to write in Dutch too? I am interested in your ideas! :-)

[ellenillustrates]

process for my writer portraits series

Most of the time, there is some personal project I am working on or that is brooding in my mind, waiting to be worked on. Sometimes it takes a long time for these projects to get finished, revisiting it from time to time when I have the chance, and sometimes I don’t even notice at first that an experiment is turning into a series of finished illustrations. This was more or less the case with my series of writer portraits.

 When deciding on what to do for a personal project, there usually are three things that I bear in mind: it has to be something that helps me finetune my illustration style and skills, it has to be something that I feel is missing, or not defined enough in my portfolio, but most importantly: I have to really have fun doing it.

A while ago I had the urge of doing a portrait again. It had been years since I did any portraits, and since I had always been used to drawing faces in a realistic style that more or less was taught to me during all the years of drawing classes I took at art academy as a child, I wondered if I would be able to do a portrait in my own style. First, I had to decide whose portrait to draw. It had to be someone that was important to me and whose face I was already familiar with. Having a certain relationship with the person helps reduce that feeling of voyeurism I get when staring at a person’s face for a long time, and of all the portraits I did before, the ones that bore the most likeness and had the most inner depth, were the portraits of people I knew.

It didn’t take long to decide: it had to be Virginia Woolf. Not only have I always been into literature and spent years of my life working as a bookseller, on top of that, Virginia Woolf is, due to her strong but feminine voice in predominantly masculine times, and her brilliant writing style, one of my favorite writers and a role-model to me.

Next step was deciding on the technique, although that was hardly a ‘step’. I had at that time just finished a picture-book project working with only blue and red colored pencils, and the whole idea was to see whether I could apply that reduced colorsheme to a portrait.

Eagerly, I began sketching, stylising her face in a more or less art-nouveau manner, focusing on the movement of the lines, and emphasising the planes in her face. Then I completed the sketch in blue and red and added a floral background. I had such fun doing this, and I was so content with how the illustration was taking shape, that only the next day I noticed that I had over-stylised her face. I would have been satisfied with the illustration if it were an imaginary character, but I wanted to draw my beloved Virginia Woolf, and this drawing lacked all of her softness.

So I started anew, in a more realistic manner, focusing more on the softness of her face, and less on stylising it, and I felt this time everyone would recognize her, and still see that the illustration was done by me.

Now of course I couldn’t stop there! I wanted to do a series, so I made a list of all of my favorite writers, and out of that list I chose the ones that had a face people would recognize. That is why Kafka, Camus and Hemingway made it to the grande finale, and Rilke and Faulkner didn’t.

 Next, I started making colorshemes for all of them. I felt that the red and blue I had used for Virginia didn’t fit all of them, and I wanted to give them colors that would fit their books and personality. Now that I read that, this does sound like a difficult task, but what I did is just recall the imagery that was evoked in my head while reading their books, and of course, those images came with colors. For instance, when thinking about Camus, I thought about scenes in his books placed in warm, brooding Algiers, of large rocks alongside dark blue water, and men diving from those hot stones, so the colors I chose were prussian blue and a warm, earthy orange tone that was a combination of cornelian and burnt ochre. I did so for all of them in the same manner, although I have to admit I cheated a bit when it came to choosing the colors for Kafka. I associated the images in his books with smudgy brown hues, almost deprived of color, but I didn’t like that for his portrait, and I felt it would stand out from the rest, so I went for a light burnt ochre and crimson alizarin (don’t you love those color names)

I also recycled the images I associated with them as patterns I used as background to their portraits. The background for Camus is vaguely inspired on pictures of Algiers, for Kafka I drew bugs as a reference to his novel ‘Metamorphosis’, for Hemingway I drew fish, as a reference to ‘the Old Man and the Sea’, and for Virginia I chose flowers, as a reference to a beautiful short story of her, called ‘Kew Gardens’, and of course the opening line of ‘Mrs Dalloway’.

The last in the series I did was a portrait of Julio Cortazar. He is much less known, but I drew his portrait as a birthday present for a good friend of mine who owns a bookstore named after the characters in one of his books: the Cronopio’s. Those ‘little green moist creatures’ as they are described, also found a way into the portrait in the background.

Of these portraits I had a series of postcards printed, and prints that I used as covers for a series of handmade notebooks, which I am now selling in my Etsy-shop, StudioEllenL.

 I did finish this series a while ago, but there are new ideas brooding in my mind to expand it with more writers, or make a new series of portraits of classic actors, or important women in history, or, or, or… sigh.