Born into a family of artists, it only made sense that Kaye Blegvad learned a thing or two. And by a thing or two, we mean to say a plethora of skills. Describing herself as a general maker-of-things, Blegvad works as both illustrator and designer employing a variety of media, including ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and print. She also runs Horizontal Press, and has her own line of jewelry under the name Datter Industries.
But when it comes to the images she produces – the end result is relatively simple. “I’ve always really liked simplified, naïve images,” she told Metal Magazine. “I don’t have a lot of time for realism. It just doesn’t do it for me. There’s an immediacy in a simple image, you can see the marks, the speed of the line, the urgency of getting an idea down. I love children’s drawings, outsider art, images made because the image needed to be made. So I guess things like that have influenced me a lot.”
Her naive style of illustrations has caught the attention of publications like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Penguin Random House, with her Instagram page amassing more than 130k fans.
“I drew from the moment I could hold a pencil and made little clay sculptures and paper dollhouses and all sorts of things,” she recalled. “I think I was always quite serious about it. When I was a bit older, 5 or 6, I began making tiny illustrated books – most of them are on the topic of cats, girls, and death. So I guess my kind of illustration was always on the cards.”
Take a look at some of her charming creations:
