Artist Focus | Anna Kuptsova

Anna Kuptsova is an illustrator and creative designer based in Europe. Over last 12 years she has collaborated with various international agencies, magazines and individual clients creating unique and eye-catching digital illustrations. She is known for her vivid, romantic, and thought-provoking art style. Anna often draws her inspiration from nature, classic and modern cinematography, science fiction and her favorite music. Find out more about her in our Q&A below:

What led you to pursue a career as an illustrator?

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I started my career as a designer. However, I‘ve always felt the urge to satisfy my creative calling. So I continued drawing for myself through the years until I started accepting projects from other people. And now I can combine my rich experience of web design and art direction with my skills of an illustrator

Talk us through your creative process when illustrating. How do you go from concept to finished piece?

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Every art piece I create starts from inspiration. The idea forms in my imagination and I try to put in on paper, or in my case a digital sketch. I usually create a couple of drafts and then choose the one I like most. Then I start working on a color palette. Starting from one or two main colors I go on adding details and final touches until the illustrations look the way I imagined.

What topics or themes inspire you most in your work?

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For personal projects, I draw my inspiration from music, dreams, movies, books. Nature is also a big source of my creative inspiration. I really enjoy creating art pieces in the magic realism genre. So often ordinary things turn into surreal elements in my mind and I simply follow those ideas and bring them to life in my artwork.

Anna Kuptsova - Night Window from Bright Illustration on Vimeo.

How do you decide on a colour palette for a piece?

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When choosing colors for any piece I always think first about what I’m actually going to draw. I consider what is the subject of the illustration, for example if it is a landscape or a portrait, or an abstract composition.

Then I decide on what mood I want to apply to it. Will it be cheerfu, gloomy, or romantic? After that, I pick one or two main colors and create a couple sketches with different color combinations of those. Seeing multiple variations helps a lot when choosing what works best for a certain piece. Then it’s simply working on the illustration and refining the final image.

What would be your dream client or project to work with?

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I’d like to work with big publishers on compelling projects for books and magazines. For example, creating illustrations for sci-fi or magic realism books series. I also hope to work on branding campaign key visuals for travel brands like AirBnB and Lufthansa, and creating art pieces for companies like Netflix or Apple would be great as well! In other words, I would be happy to reach as many people with my art as possible!

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Anna is represented by Helen Biles — to work with Anna please get in touch. You can see more of Anna’s work in her portfolio here.