If Bertha Sun‘s illustrations look a bit like fashion sketches, that’s no accident. A Hong Kong-based illustrator and designer—and recently named one of Perspective magazine’s 40 under 40—Sun started out working in the textile industry, and she honed her skills sketching outfits and fabric designs. Maybe that’s why so many of her drawings feature either women striking a pose, or abstract patterns that wouldn’t look out of place on a summer dress.
Sun’s been drawing since she was small, and she studied art formally in college at the Rhode Island School of Design. Rather than major in illustration, she opted to take a more practical route and study textiles, and went on to take a job in fashion. That field that gave her the chance to see her designs in the real world. “Textiles, to me, meant creating interactive artwork,” she says. “You can look at it, wear it, sit on it, or all of the above. Illustration back then played a smaller role in my work—I simply used it as application drawings.”
Bertha 小时候就开始画画，并进入罗德岛设计学院正式学习艺术。她并没有主修插画，而是选择了更实际的路线——织品设计，并在毕业后从事时尚工作。这个领域让她有机会在现实世界中实现她的设计。“对我而言，织品意味着创造互动性的艺术品。”她说，“你可以看它，穿它，坐在上面，或者同时做这三件事情。插画在我过去的工作里只占一小部分，我将它当作一种应用工具。”
After several years working in the fashion industry in Hong Kong and New York, Sun decided to set out on her own and expand to other media. Now her studio, Yet Another Name, handles branding and design for a portfolio of clients from the fashion world and beyond. As she puts it, she couldn’t resist the temptation of working in more than one kind of art: “I guess I just became greedy.” And that work led her back to illustration.
在香港和纽约时装界工作了几年之后，Bertha 决定自立门户，并将触手拓展到其他领域。现在，她的工作室 Yet Another Name 为来自时尚界及其他的广泛客户进行品牌规划和设计工作。正如她所说，她无法抗拒在多重艺术领域中工作的诱惑。 “我猜我越来越贪心了。”也正是这项工作，让她重新回归插画。
She works both by computer and by hand, switching back and forth for maximum control and freedom. “I like creating layouts on the computer so I can really play around, and I like doing the actual drawing by hand to get a more natural touch,” she explains. “It also allows room for happy accidents.” In the work shown here, she explores human figures, flowers, and abstract patterns and shapes.
平时她会使用电脑和手绘来工作，来回切换以获得最大的创作自由。“我喜欢在电脑上做编排，让我可以尽情玩耍发挥创意，而手绘能赋予作品更自然的质地。”她解释道，“这能制造很多惊喜。”在这里展示的作品中，她探索了人体、花卉和抽象的图案和形状。
For Sun, illustration is a way to freely explore both her emotions and her technique. “I’m always experimenting with ways to combine my love of patterns and shapes into my illustrations,” she says. Her sketches here are a series of studies in line and color, and the questions they raise are of a formal nature. “What effect does it give a piece when certain parts of the subject become just a flat shape? What happens when the patterned background swallows the foreground?” The answer is a series of works with a casual, offhand elegance.
对于 Bertha 来说，插图是一种自由探索情感和技巧的方式。“我一直在尝试将我对图案和形状的热爱融入插画中。”她的插画是一系列针对线条和颜色的研究，也是关于自己创作形式的提问：“当主体的某些部分变成一个扁平的形状时，会对作品产生什么效果？或当有图案的背景融合到前景时，又会发生什么？”答案即是一系列充满了漫不经心的优雅的作品。
Website: yetanothername.com
Instagram: @berfa
Contributor: Allen Young
Chinese Translation: Yang Yixuan
