Heather LeMay
Helego—aka Heather—is a busy mom of three. She also has a passion for animals, nature and anything creative.
Helego has been drawing since she could hold a crayon and hasn’t stopped since. As a child, she dreamed of becoming an artist and would often illustrate books with friends. Today, Helego is realising that childhood dream.
As an illustrator and graphic designer living in the Pacific Northwest, Helego is no stranger to yucky weather, so on a stormy day, you can often find her curled up with a cup of tea and her drawing pad, listening to the rain.
You can find Helego at helegocreative.com or on Instagram @_helego_.
Kirsti Vass
Kirsti, of Art by Kirsti, is a self-taught artist living on the Moray Coast in Scotland. She works in watercolours, pencil and acrylics.
Throughout her life, Kirsti dabbled in many different arts and crafts but could never settle on anything that held her creative self captive. As her family grew, she trained as a primary teacher and used her love of art to help inspire her students to discover their own creativity.
Due to health issues, Kirsti took early retirement and spent some time exploring her artistic style. Settling on acrylics, Kirsti started creating pet portraits for friends and family. As she evolved her skills and art business, Kirsti introduced watercolours into her repertoire, which is now her favourite medium. She increased her portfolio to include landscapes and has discovered a joy for sketching architecture, quaint shop fronts and has recently branched out to add wedding venues and live-guest illustrations to her skill set. She feels extremely lucky to be able to create personal, meaningful and sentimental bespoke pieces of art for her clients.
You can find out more about Kirsti via her website: https://artbykirsti.co.uk
Yorris Handoko
Yorris Handoko is a fulltime illustrator based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has been illustrating children's books since 2021 and received first place in the Self Published Children's Book Awards and honourable mention in the Design and Production categories in the 2023 Catholic Media Awards event in Baltimore, USA, for his illustrations in the book Mysteries of the Holy Rosary: The Life of Jesus and Mary. For further information, Yorris can be reached at yorris.handoko.gmail.com.
Abigail Roscoe
Abigail is a Mexican Canadian multidisciplinary artist, who loves to focus on illustration. Most of her time is spent illustrating children's books and working on her own writing projects, such as comics, short visual narratives and picture books. Abigail has a passion for animals and nature conservation, and she hopes to let this passion show through her work.
Abigail currently lives in Switzerland, but she has moved a lot during her life and draws inspiration from the many places she's lived in: the Canadian wilderness, Mexico and its folk tales and the Swiss mountains and cityscapes are some themes that show in her work. Abigail’s illustrative style ranges in form, but it features expressive animals and detailed, immersive illustrations. She is also autistic and disabled, and her illustrations have been a tool to reflect on several aspects of her own life, from the neurodivergent experience to exploring identity and belonging through art.
Abigail completed her bachelor's degree in The Netherlands when she graduated from Hanzehogeschool Academie, Minerva, with a focus on illustration and animation. Her background in animation also helps her to create lively, dynamic scenes and expressive, relatable characters.
Andrea Corsini
Andrea Corsini is a freelance fantasy and dark-fantasy illustrator and concept artist from Italy.
Growing up, Andrea was an avid collector of anything fantasy, such as small figurines of mythological creatures, minerals, much-loved video games and books. One of her favourite books is Faeries, which was written and illustrated by Brian Froud and Alan Lee in 1978. This book helped Andrea shape her childhood through its magical illustrations and stories.
Also influenced by history and gothic themes, Andrea strives to illustrate artworks full of storytelling, emotion and dynamic lighting.
She has worked for trading card games (TCGs), indie video games and book publishing and can be reached at corasndrea@gmail.com for any projects related to fantasy and dark fantasy themes.
Rupert Godesen
Rupert is a keen cartoonist, having wasted a very expensive education doodling and drawing Asterix & Obelix in the margins of his exercise books. He continued this through art college, and it came in very useful when he was commissioned to go to Kabul to teach a group of artists from the art faculty.
In his spare time, Rupert is an avid vegetable grower, having picked up the passion from his grandfather. During his time living in London and Bournemouth, every available square inch of the garden had a pot or grow bag in it with a tomato, courgette or runner bean in it. Now, his bookshelves at home in France are groaning with books and magazines on the subject. Other interests include survival skills (he has run several courses for the military and for civvy friends), running and cycling. He is also interested in “The Great Game” era in India and Pakistan, about which he intends to write a novel.
Ari Silva
Ari is a young artist, who began illustrating children's books at the age of 15. He believes that cooperation and communication is very important when it comes to creating. Ari has always looked to different and diverse sources of inspiration in order to learn and be the most versatile creator he could be.
Born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, Ari has been exposed to many different cultures and people, which reflects in his art through diversity and representation in characters. He believes children's books should be magical, reflecting and facilitating a child's bright and colourful imagination.
