The Buenos Aires-based artist also recently teamed up with Cartoon Network for its project, in which a number of artists around the world created their own version of the pint-sized cartoon female superheroes. This past year, Riposte Magazine commissioned Ruiz to illustrate an article titled “Self-Care as Warfare.” The digital drawings which accompany it show two bendy women who truly know how to multitask-they stare confidently at the reader while striking yoga poses and applying perfume. In step, she has become a go-to illustrator for brands and projects looking to celebrate women, body positivity, and diversity. The artist defies the tall, lanky frames which have traditionally filled fashion illustrations and magazines, rendering her figures in a vast range of skin tones and body types. In one of her graphic illustrations, her female subject dances and hoists a boa constrictor high in the air, dressed to the nines in a peach jumpsuit and sizable bronze accessories. Ruiz’s muses are strong, chic, acrobatic women. Some stick to pencils and paint, but others employ Photoshop brushes, the new and improved iPad Pro, and animation software.īelow, we highlight 15 young illustrators pushing the medium forward, whether through obsessive drawings of cats, anime-inspired gifs, or satirical portraits of Donald Trump. And no longer confined to paper sketchpads and print publications alone, contemporary illustrators are indeed expanding their toolkit, techniques, and the range of projects they’re pursuing. While illustration has traditionally referred to drawing commissioned for media and advertising, times are clearly changing. I’m interested in doing good work and cultivating my curiosity for things.”

Milan-based Olimpia Zagnoli agrees: “I’m not really interested in dividing my work into separate boxes.

“I’m not really sure there is a major distinction-boundaries between artistic practices are increasingly and refreshingly blurry,” says Brooklyn-based illustrator and painter Sam Kalda. What separates illustration from art? For most emerging illustrators, the answer is complicated.

Digital illustrators