Yulia Brodskaya

“Feeling inspired by Yulia Brodskaya’  has been on my FB profile page as my ‘source of inspiration’ for longer than I can remember. From the minute I first discovered her work in Paper: Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Cut (Black Dog publishing) along with other great paper artists like Noriko Ambe

Kako Ueda

and Georgia Russell

I have been mesmerised by her work.

Yulia Brodskaya  is an artist and illustrator known for her handcrafted highly detailed and elegant paper illustrations.

She was born in Moscow in 1983 where she produced decorative fine art whilst studying  - she also developed interests in diverse creative practices such as origami and collage and textile painting along with the more traditional fine art practices. She moved to London in 1994 and continued her education, whilst working as a freelance graphic designer,  graduating with an MA in Graphic Communication at the University of Hertfordshire in 2006.

She soon switched to illustration – her graphic design background influencing her art work as most of her pieces have a strong typographic focus:

“Typography is my second love, after paper and I’m really happy that I’ve found a way of combining the two. Having said that, I don’t want to exclude non-typobased designs, I’d like to work on different projects.”

Much of Brodskaya’s work uses the old techniques of paper folding and the 18th Century art form paper quilling in which ribbons of paper are curled and twilled to create intricate designs. Since initially being approached by Orange, who selected a few of her pieces for an advertising campaign, her reputation as an international illustrator has soared – the list of companies that have since commissioned her work is extensive and includes Hermes, Nokia, Cadbury, Cafe Rouge, Penguin Press and The Sunday Times. She has also designed one of the Google Chrome themes …

She was elected a member of the International Society of Typographic Designers in 2006 in recognition of her typographic achievement. She was also was named the ‘breakthrough star’ of the 2009 by Creative review magazine (Dec 2009).

For me though, it is her use of paper and colour that makes her stand out. I have seen paper quilling before but nothing as intricate or as beautiful as this. I love the way she uses the colour and the shadows created by the paper quills to add depth to her work. This recent piece caught my eye on her website, and illustrates my point ….

the folds and bends only seek to add to the movement in the piece. It is intricate, delicate and utterly mesmerising.

I  could stare at it for hours.