14 Brilliant European Illustrators We’re Excited About
We’ve reached out to 14 fantastic illustrators we’re excited about from across Europe and invited them to show their work and present themselves to us. From Germany and Sweden to Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands, all in one spot.
It’s a great resource for brands and companies looking to find, hire and collaborate with European illustrators, or for anyone looking for inspiration or new illustration artists to follow.
Illustration by
Linn Warme
Hi, I’m Johanna, a German-based Illustrator and Comic Artist. My work is deeply inspired by the beauty and diversity of the natural world, spanning the emotional spectrum from contemplative and melancholic to whimsical and bright.
I primarily work in publishing, llustrating literature for children and young adults, ranging from cover art to full-scale narratives. I am currently expanding my practice to write and illustrate my own graphic novels.
My expertise also extends to conceptual illustration for urban and future-oriented design studios. I help visualize complex concepts and provide character design and illustration services for the cultural sector.
Outside of the studio, I find inspiration in the earth: gardening, swimming, and exploring the outdoors with my daughter to collect nature’s small treasures; from stones to dry twigs and empty snail shells.
I’m Linn Warme, an illustrator and surface pattern designer from Sweden. My work is often detailed, botanical, and full of rhythm and color, inspired by the Swedish nature around me.
For me, illustration is about craftsmanship and flow, how lines, colors, and shapes come together to create something that feels alive and joyful. I’m drawn to the kind of work that rewards a second look, where there’s always another leaf, another curve, another small detail waiting to be discovered.
With a background in textile design and years spent working with fashion and home goods, I bring a strong sense of how illustration lives on a surface and translates into the real world. Whether I’m creating a standalone piece or a repeating pattern, I care deeply about the feeling a finished image carries with it.
I’m Anja Bartelt, a Berlin-based artist working between illustration and ceramics. My work explores emotional states, inner worlds, and quiet personal narratives through playful, colorful imagery.
I create illustrated objects as well as drawings, often featuring animals, characters, and small narrative scenes. I’m especially interested in making things that feel both light and a bit strange at the same time — something that can be comforting but also slightly unsettling.
Lately, I’ve been exploring how illustration can move into physical objects, building small worlds through ceramic pieces and hand-drawn surfaces.
My name is Anna Marshall and I work as an illustrator, designer, and artist under the label Anna Salto Art, located in South Germany.
I completed my studies at the Münster University of Applied Sciences for Design, graduating in 2006 with a diploma in illustration. Since then I have been working as a freelance illustrator.
In my studio, located in an old shipping container in Perfekt Futur Karlsruhe, I love creating portraits of famous women from the worlds of culture, science, and society. Portrait illustrations can be used in many areas: as part of a book cover, a portrait for a column in the editorial section, or a couple’s portrait as a wedding gift.
In addition, I am a children’s book illustrator and author, and have had the pleasure of publishing six of my own picture books with German children’s book publishers so far.
Recently I am equally passionate about painting: On the canvas, I explore how emotional and mental processes can be translated into a figurative, painterly form.
You can also browse my online shop for art prints, small gifts, and original paintings. Enjoy!
I’m Jonas Welin, an illustrator, sculptor, and designer from Västerås, Sweden. I love creating my own little world full of odd characters, brought to life in my colorful and fun style. Whether I’m sculpting, drawing, or designing, there’s always a sense of playfulness warmth, and something a little bit odd running through my work.
My work can be found on packaging, kid’s clothing, greeting cards, editorial work and in children’s books.
I’m Riikka Laakso, a Berlin-based illustrator with Finnish roots.
I mainly work on editorial, cultural, and educational projects, creating character-driven illustrations
for magazines, institutions, and cultural organizations. My work features a colorful, simple visual
language that blends analog and digital elements, with small details that bring a smile. I also love
bringing my illustrations to life through animated GIFs.
I draw inspiration from nature, my everyday life, and observing people and their quirks.
Previous clients include The New Yorker, ZEIT, Der Spiegel, Goethe-Institut and Deutsches
Museum.
As a freelance artist and illustrator, I have been living and working in Innsbruck, Austria, since 2021. I earned my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Informative Illustration at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, where I also taught for a while afterward. Since 2014, I have been working as an illustrator for German-language and international media and clients such as Die Zeit, Google, Greenpeace, Patagonia, and Arte Magazin. My books have been published in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany by publishers such as Chronicle Books, Frances Lincoln, and Rowohlt. For my illustrative work, I have been shortlisted three times for the World Illustration Awards and have won two gold and one silver medal at the Global Illustration Awards. My work has been exhibited internationally, including at Somerset House in London, the Illusalon Headquarters in Beijing, and the Teatro de Vila Real in Portugal.
In my artistic practice, I interweave narrative and abstraction to draw attention to extreme weather, climate tipping points, and their ecological and social consequences. In doing so, I combine fragments of drawing, painting, set design, textile art, and sculpture into a form of visual storytelling that directs the gaze toward the overlooked, the repressed, and the fragile. My work pays homage to the vulnerability of nature, which manifests itself in both multi-layered two-dimensional compositions and large-scale installations. Building on my training in illustration, I explore the diagram as an aesthetic and rhetorical tool. Drawing serves as a means for me to translate language into complex visual structures and to document and simultaneously stage natural phenomena. The resulting pictorial spaces function as a mouthpiece for the environment and address questions of extinction and protection, of leaving and staying, as well as of interdependencies. My work examines the distillation of beauty and processes of self-formation to create approaches that render the seemingly self-evident legible anew. My works challenge familiar narratives about “Mother Earth” and subvert supposed trivialities—toward a sensitive, compelling engagement with our responsibility toward a changing environment.
I’m Eszter, a freelance illustrator from Hungary. My work is inspired by nature and personal experiences, and I like to create warm, expressive images using bold colors and rounded shapes. I mainly work digitally, focusing on children’s books, magazines, and editorial illustration.
It’s important to me to create meaningful work that has something to say and can bring a smile to people’s faces. I also enjoy exploring different formats, from book covers and posters to more experimental ideas. Lately, I’ve become interested in board game illustration, and I’m excited to explore how storytelling can work in a more interactive way.
In my free time I like reading books, watching animation movies, playing video and board games, traveling or hiking, exploring the world and its beauty around me.
I’m Elise Vandeplancke, an illustrator who lives and works in Belgium. I never stop experimenting with materials, shapes, and textures as I’m always searching for the best and most playful ways to make my images talk.
I love my craft and enjoy it deeply and I’m eager to share that passion with the people around me. That’s why I organize an illustration festival in my hometown called Potloodvenster.
At the festival, I bring people together and let them engage with high-quality illustrations and illustrators. If the people feel encouraged to play with images themselves and pick up a pencil, that’s all I could wish for.
Hey there! My name is Jenny, and I am an illustrator with experience in editorial, event live drawing, murals and self-publishing. My work is tied together with my love of colour, quirky characters and trying to capture a sense of fun within my illustrations. I’m constantly inspired by animals and nature, but I also love illustrating portraits, having done live drawing at corporate events and private commissions.
You can find me at various conventions across the UK, selling my prints and other illustrated goods or getting involved with a charity event – I’ve recently completed two large lion sculptures for the Pride of Yorkshire sculpture trail, which will be sold to raise funds for Sheffield’s Childrens Hospital. I’m also a proud owner of a risograph machine and I’m very fond of snail mail, printmaking and small press!
Hey! I’m Carole, French designer and published illustrator, with 15 years experience in the industry (and almost 10 years as an independent creative!). I started off my career by the beautiful coast of North Wales, where I was lucky enough to live for 5 years, and I’m now back in France, living in Brittany with my Welsh husband. I draw inspiration from the nature around me and the magic of childhood. My style is full of joy, colour, and a good dose of sensibility. As you might have guessed, my passion is in illustrating children’s books and designing any products for kids, as I love bringing to life whole new worlds and making a positive impact to kids from all backgrounds and their parents. I also enjoy crafting custom lettering, designing book covers, and fun branding. When I’m not busy creating, I like to potter in my garden, go for long walks, read a good book (with a blanket on of course), and learn to play the drums!
I am Sebastian König, and I live and work in Hamburg, Germany. My illustrations have a strong focus on visual storytelling. I love to add an extra layer of narration to mainly symbolic imagery, resulting in simple but expressive one picture stories. I have worked with editorial clients like The New York Times, Bloomberg, and It’s Nice That, as well as brands like Apple, Rimowa, and Warby Parker. Besides my commercial work, I regularly work on publications and prints, especially using risograph printing.
My name is Lorena Spurio and I’m an illustrator and comic artist. I mainly work in editorials, creating illustrations for newspaper and magazine articles. What I love most about these assignments is that every time I get the chance to learn something new about so many different topics. I have a bit of an obsession with household objects, I fill pages of my sketchbooks drawing them, and lately I’m turning those sketches into a series of paintings on paper using oil pastels. When I’m not drawing, I’m most likely with my friends, philosophizing about life over a glass of wine or taking long walks while listening to my playlists.
I am Cornelie, illustrator and artist living in the beautiful Achterhoek region in the Netherlands.
I love illustrating strong views and exciting stories for print, branding and packaging. My curiosity is a talent that helps visualising ideas to images in a colourful, layered digital style, often based on traditional techniques. Having a background in fine arts and many years experience in education, I am able to translate the visions and values of my clients.
Favourite things to draw (a non conclusive list): flowers, cars, people, mountains, leaves, little creatures, machines, ghosts, fruits, plants, fish, bottles, faces, concepts, feelings, food, books, maps and animals, I am never shy of inspiration and ideas.
Nature and travel, stories, mythology and crafts are always inspiring me.
My personal work often starts as sketches during my solo travels and ends up as home decoration in beautiful colourful prints and paintings.
