Isobel Mehta's illustrative practice considers “identity, memory and documentation”

Illustrator Isobel Mehta graduated from Brighton University with a BA in illustration last summer. She draws most of her work digitally, using photography “to research and structurally compose my pieces.”

Isobel’s illustrative practice revolves around themes of “identity, memory and documentation”. For her Heritage project, Isobel looked at family photographs and used them to illustrate her Zoroastrian family’s migration from India to the UK. “Zoroastrianism is one of world’s oldest monotheistic religions and today in the UK there are only 4000 Zoroastrians,” the illustrator explains. “It is the fastest dying religion in the world. This series of illustrations follows the struggle my family had starting life as migrants in the UK and eventually giving up their culture and religious practice in order to integrate in a British society.”

Elsewhere, Isobel’s work has a notable Japanese theme to it, which she tells us is the product of a trip to the country last summer. Inspired by the “posters, maps, clothes, packaging and books” she found there, Isobel has now began translating her illustrative style to product and text design. “I am completely in love the work of Toshio Saeki and Tadanori Yokoo. I love Mehdi Ravandi for his use of colour and powerful storytelling and Newsha Tavakolian and Joe Sacco for their journalistic masterpieces,” she says.

Next, Isobel is working with strangers who she has connected with via social media on a comic “set in a slightly surreal and hyperconnected world where the characters find themselves in super fast-paced and distorted realities.”