Adding Depth to Art with Patterns _ Nick Liefhebber _ Human Made

My name is Nick Liefhebber. I'm an artist, illustrator, designer from Utrecht in the Netherlands. I grew up in Vught which is a small village in the south of the Netherlands and I always thought that art wasn't really a thing to study but in the end I ended up studying graphic design in Utrecht. In art school I always wanted to study illustration but I wasn't really an illustrator yet. I was working for myself as a graphic designer but I knew I just wanted to illustrate and I started working for myself and self-thought a way I can make images and illustrate in a way I like. I think my use of color comes from printmaking. I do a lot of screen printing and there it's like every extra color you use is a lot of extra work. My way of working with color is like thinking in a few basic colors and adding a few extra tints of that to it. Procreate inspired a new style for me of illustrating. I started creating my own brushes which wasn't possible in my other way of working. So for me it's like an addition to my tools and clients often also come to me for that specific look or visual style. The most fun part for me is like creating your brushes. I create two kinds of brushes. One is like patterns, pattern brushes, so I can fill in shapes when masking an object on your canvas. Because I like when using patterns it gives like an extra layer of depth or you can when you make a figurative pattern you can add an extra layer of meaning to an object. Coming from analog media like with inks or with brushes or paint, this combination of digital and analog is really easy for me to get that look in Procreate. That's something I don't find in other tools, especially with this ease of use. The thing I'm working on right now is discovering a new tool again which is woodcut making, printmaking. And for me that's kind of interesting because all these tools like Procreate or printmaking have their own limitations which I really like and they forced me to work in black and white which is a really new thing for me. And it's funny because it's also slowly translating like back in my digital work as well. Main thing I didn't do when I was young was trust myself or experiment enough. I thought I need to do something I'm good at but I think it's very good when you experiment a lot and you have to create a lot of illustrations which don't look good right away.