Laura Wood’s distinctive style of illustration has earned her accolades and clients from all over the world. Laura’s work emanates a childlike sense of wonder and lightheartedness. Her illustrations are often featured in children’s books and as a result has to fulfil a narrative. Her knack of visual storytelling reinforces and often goes above and beyond a story’s literary bounds.
Laura had pursued a career in the film industry in her homeland of Italy, but she wasn’t really connecting with the work and found herself disillusioned. As a result she made the tough decision to move to Australia to study illustration. An intuitive call that has obviously paid dividends. After working in the industry for only 3 years, her portfolio boasts a polished aesthetic and diverse range of satisfied clients.
“I would describe my work as colourful, bright and humorous. Although I render my artworks digitally, I like to give them an organic feel with textured brushes and hand made textures.” Laura’s work radiates a warm kind of inclusiveness, with the ability to transcend age. Children, grown-ups, animal buddies and the environment coalesce in dreamlike scenes. Her adept skill set allows her to translate the organic feel of a hand rendered piece to a digital work, although she may dispute this in her modesty.
“I’ve always been drawn towards dry media, in particular graphite, pastels and coloured pencils. Especially when used in a dirty and messy way. I really like the rough texture that those mediums produce on the paper. I always try to achieve this look in my illustrations, even though I think part of this gets lost when I go into the digital stage.“ Her influences range from positive life experiences, music, other people’s artwork, travel and interesting people.
Now based in the vibrant and creative city of Bristol, UK. Miss Woods is currently busy working on four different book projects. A prolific artist Laura states “I like to be busy and work on different projects at the same time, so I can make sure to step away from one illustration and not focusing on it for too long.” Two of the books Laura has recently illustrated are about to be published this month. She also has a great aspiration become an author as well an illustrator in the next 5 years. Given her innate storytelling ability, this shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for her.
