Since moving to the US from
India, Shreya Gupta’s clients
include Google, The New
York Times, Fast Company
and Penguin. Her creativity wasn’t
encouraged growing up – instead
she was told to focus on her studies,
eventually taking a computer science
engineering degree. But working in IT
left her feeling “very frustrated”, and
so she built up an illustration portfolio
to gain an MFA place at New York’s
School of Visual Arts.
Her editorial work begins by
reading and rereading the piece,
making notes and underlining words
that spark ideas for images. “Then I
execute thumbnails to try different
compositions,” she says. She then
sketches three or more of the best
ideas to send to the client, before
finalising the selected idea by scanning
her ink on paper work and colouring
in Photoshop. “I include a lot of hand-
drawn variations of textures in my
work,” she says.
Career highlights so far have
been creating 50 illustrations over
two months for a 150th anniversary
edition of Little Women and scooping
the Society of Illustrators’ LA book
category gold medal for her work on
novel The Blackbird Girls. She hopes to
start creating picture books this year,
aided by a new iPad to speed things up.
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COMPLEMENTING EDITORIAL PIECES WITH ART BORN OF FRUSTRATION
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