In her essay, Czech writer Bára Čápová gives us an intricate look into the heyday and present state of a once-popular online world-building game still suspended “out there”. This piece was composed exclusively for SWARM Mag.
#illustration
illustration
The colour scheme and soft, rounded style of Jonathan Hoffboll put us on a sporty nostalgia train to the station 80s/90s. Remember all the basketball trading cards, funky casual T-shirt prints, over-the-top sneakers and all the Will Smith movies?
Block-coloured and seemingly ominous illustrations by Marta Moya bring us unto a relatable universe of distractedness and the fidgety mind.
An arachnologist turned full-time illustrator and teacher, Barcelona-based Emma Roulette guides us through her colour-by-the-numbers drawing style and ponders the meaning of borders and recent, newly-made rifts.
“Written for Swarm Mag in a bus from Prague to Chlumec nad Cidlinou. It was hot, too hot, and the couple behind me kept kicking my seat.” In his essay, Ondřej Trhoň views the act of writing as a way of repurposing and reinventing oneself.
The body of work of French illustrator Amelie Barnathan “stems from her obsessive relationship with drawing”, which she believes to be an act of utmost intimacy with a direct line to one's mind. She repurposes the aesthetic and symbolism of other cultures and twists the classical portrayal of women and girls in mythologies.
Czech illustrator Martina Fischmeister let us pull the curtain on the creative process of her dreamy, floaty abstract works that, nearly paradoxically, help her get grounded in reality.
“It's kinda strange, sometimes,” says Dimitri Litzinger a Münster-based illustrator, about his dreamy vignettes suspended in timelessness and subtle gradients.
Tim Mulder is an accomplished illustrator from the Netherlands, focusing on minimalistic colour palette, surreal comics-like environment, and the power of a clear line.
A contemplative piece by Barbora Čápová outlines the future of the environment in which we display artworks and why we’ll never get rid of physical galleries. Accompanied by thematic illustrations by Rafał Kwiczor.
Belarus meets Balenciaga in an eerie solid-line series of illustrations by Margarita Senkova.
