With travel ill-advised these days, staying in is not only encouraged—it’s practically our only option. But home can also be a place of comfort and coziness. If nothing else, Chloe Joyce’s illustrations are proof for the joys of alone-time.
Based in Sydney, Joyce grew up in a small coastal town and is inspired by nature and plants. Incidentally, house plants are also a common motif throughout her work. “I love nature and plants,” she exclaimed in an interview with Goat Story, “they always feature heavily in my illustrations.” Aside from nature, Joyce is also inspired by people, “watching and being around family and friends and listening to their stories and experiences.”
Much like the unorganized, happily chaotic, interiors shown in her paintings, Joyce’s creative process is organic, and changes from piece to piece. “There’s never any one way that I approach work, I’m not an organised person so it doesn’t make sense for me to take an organised approach,” she explains. “Sometimes I’ll come up with an idea on the bus and I’ll scribble it down or it could be in the middle of the night when I get up and I’ll have to stay up the rest of the night trying to bring it to life.”
According to Joyce, the one constant is that she does a lot of rough sketches beforehand. “I’m not afraid for the start of an idea to look ugly, although I am always envious of illustrators whose roughs are neat and beautiful and clean,” she admits. “Most of the time mine look like I’ve done them with my left hand whilst blindfolded! Then I like to blast some ‘Salt-N-Pepa’ and get my painting on!”
Her work is a happy mixture of mediums, with the end result scanned and finished up digitally. “I just like to draw things that I want to see or that I find nice and interesting and that make me happy,” Joyce sums it up. Show her some love on Instagram.
