Stina Löfgren’s softly-coloured line drawings capture the surreal in everyday life

Date
1 February 2017

Illustrator Stina Löfgren flits between image making and design, with her practice revolving “around the creation process and effect of images”. Stina works with fine, defined lines and soft colours to highlight “the surreal in everyday life” and uses 2D and 3D techniques to express her ideas. Stina’s portfolio is full of duotone illustrations, sticking to only a couple of hues to convey the mood of the piece, which gives her work a clean and fresh aesthetic. “It’s a lot of fun working with colours and it’s also a way to not get bored of myself, to tweak everything to a colour setting that’s a bit itchy,” she says.

Describing her style as “concise and kind”, Stina has created commissions for numerous Swedish publications including Tecknaren, Natur & Kultur and Spekta. “When it comes to editorial illustrations it’s mostly the idea I enjoy, writing a lot of stuff on paper and coming up with the recipe for the image,” says Stina.

The illustrator’s process gains momentum as soon as she feels she’s got something “fun to work with”. “It could be an idea of a layout, a nose or a colour, and then I start to craft the image. I enjoy drafting, trying to simplify as much as possible while still keeping a sense of humanity,” Stina explains. “Then I just ink the drawing and do the colouring, which is done digitally most of the time, although I sometimes use crayons and colour by hand. My drawers are filled with black and white line drawings in ink.”

We featured her previously for her instructional illustrations about lunges, which stuck to a monochrome palette. Since then, she’s worked on numerous projects including illustrating maths teaching techniques for Spektra, spot images for literary mag Revy and product illustrations and gifs for furniture producer Hem.

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Stina Löfgren: Revy

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Stina Löfgren: Revy

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Stina Löfgren: Revy

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Stina Löfgren:

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Stina Löfgren:

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Stina Löfgren: SVD Kultur

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Stina Löfgren: SVD Kultur

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Stina Löfgren: Revy

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Stina Löfgren: Tecknaren

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Stina Löfgren: Tecknaren

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Stina Löfgren: Spektra

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Stina Löfgren: Revy

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About the Author

Rebecca Fulleylove

Rebecca Fulleylove is a freelance writer and editor specialising in art, design and culture. She is also senior writer at Creative Review, having previously worked at Elephant, Google Arts & Culture, and It’s Nice That.

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