Veerle's blog

With our next guest it's time again to put a woman's touch to it. Enter a world of fashion and sophistication.

My name is Lisa Henderling, I have worked as a freelance illustrator for the past 25 years, live two hours above Manhattan in a small town. I do illustrations for book covers, magazines, advertising, games, stores, websites, etc. Mostly fashiony images now, but over the years I have done travel illustrations and business illustrations. I love it, but it is a business and I have to be flexible! I was trained in Fashion Illustration but there were many years when all I heard from clients was " Your people are too fashiony"! "And it's too weird for the middle of the US". Fortunately, times have changed!

Lisa's work has a certain flair to it which makes it ideal for the fashion world. The stylishness and originality is all there. She loves to use transparent patterns on top of fixed lines and shapes together with bold color combinations. Pure, very feminine, simple and stylish at the same time. This makes me appreciate her work very much.

Do you first sketch your illustrations on paper? Can you reveal a bit of your usual technical process? Which applications do you mainly use?

I sketch on tracing paper with a black prisma color pencil. I do lots of sketches. It is usually for an assignment so there are lots of requirements of what has to be included. Sometimes I do a few different versions, ideas, unless I am having one of those magical days were I love it on the first try! Then I do several sketches, refining my own drawing by retracing it. I like really tight roughs. I even use templates, curves, and circles on the last rough because I am into refining the image into shapes and simplifying it. Then I scan it into Photoshop, save it as a TIFF and then open it in Illustrator and save as an EPS file. I use the tracing as my top layer, and then add my other layers in color as I go.

How do you come up with the ornaments you regularly use in your work?

Some of the ornaments are from the pallettes in illustrator, and are manipulated and distorted and some I design myself.

What's your ultimate dream project as an illustrator?

Wow, guess it would be getting sent to Tahiti, by some great department store, all expenses paid, to get inspired and do research ..and then coming back and illustrating shopping bags for them of what I saw!!!

Did the Internet influence your work?

I have been working for a long time before the Internet, but yes, it influences my work now. I love being able to do an illustration at night in NY, upload it and having it be seen all over the world an hour later! Also, being able to E-mail my illustrations to clients has made it possible to live anywhere and work for anyone.

What do you do to recharge your creative batteries?

One of the best ways is to take a break from drawing! I look at magazines, the stranger the better, travel, especially Europe, were I think the illustration and design is way ahead of the US. NYC streets...endless inspiration just from the energy there, and galleries, shopping, eating, reading!

More examples at Lisa's website.