Graphic design illustrator Maria Magdalena van Wyk sets her artwork apart from the rest by hand-drawing pictures, using intricate monochrome lines. While more and more illustrators go digital, van Wyk’s methods are rather more oldschool.
“They [the public] are used to illustrations being all digital,” she says. “But there’s something really beautiful to me in hand-drawing and line drawing.”
The Cape Town-based artist describes her aesthetic as being “simple and elegant” lines juxtaposed with white space.
Van Wyk can’t pinpoint when her love for drawing began, but says it had always been a side project until she decided to share her talent in October last year.
“I’ve never really showed it to anyone except friends and family,” she adds.
She launched her career with “The Wander Collection” described as a series of snippets from an ordinary life made extraordinary through lines of ink.
Van Wyk most recently collaborated with two New York-based poets, Ilana Strauss and Hazel Encarnacion. Both pieces were exhibited in global zine collaborations at Le Galeria in New York this year.
