Hello, my name is Gráinne Quinlan. I grew up in a little village in Wicklow and now live in Dublin city. My work has a cartoony line-and-colour style, created primarily digitally, though my ideas usually begin as sketches on paper. I love bringing stories to life in the most dramatic and vibrant way I can, using detail and tone to create focal points and build vivid worlds. Urban sketching keeps me curious, and sharpens my drawing and observational skills.

I studied animation in college, alongside composition, colour, character design and figure drawing, and years of working as a background artist in animation have made me deeply invested in placing characters in fun, interesting environments. I’ve taken part in a joint exhibition of fairy-tale illustrations, shown work in several exhibitions with my urban sketching group, and have been published as an illustrator in Ladybug Magazine for Cricket Media. My process is very step-by-step: I begin with tiny, rough sketches to explore character and world, make many versions until the direction feels right, then build cleaner sketches and pages of thumbnails before developing a more detailed composition and final piece.

As a child, I was drawn to illustrations rich with detail that I could disappear into: the townscapes of Richard Scarry; the tiny animal world of Brambly Hedge; and the Usborne cut-away illustrations of castles and ships. I still carry that sense of wonder with me. I’m inspired by children’s books, by the variety of people and places around me, by the beauty of nature, and by the small details of everyday life.