Plum Illustration, an illustration collective based in Brooklyn, NY, has taken over the art direction and illustration of four stories at Penny. They spoke with us about their process!
So, we’re thrilled that Plum Illustration is doing a takeover of four of our prose pieces for the next issue of Penny! Tell us a little about how Plum Illustration came to be. How did you meet? Why band together?
Thanks for asking us to work for Penny! We are excited about them :) We all went to Rhode Island School of Design where we studied illustration. We weren’t as close friends back then but we were always interested in each other’s work and started to notice similar themes and interests that later brought us together to form a collective. We also moved to a new city around the same time and that unified us, because New York was intimidating and we felt safe and inspired to make our own little community. It has been only a year since we created Plum, and we have weekly meetings and dream about our future together.
What are your goals as an illustration collective?
Our goal is to experiment on a lot of different projects together. We share our own individual resources and strength together as a group and collaborate in a new way! There are not a lot of illustration collectives and we don’t have a role model which we all think is great, to be something new.
You all have an obvious intelligence when it comes to interpreting prose, in addition to your work being beautiful, but you also all have distinct styles and mediums. Do you have a philosophy about your approach to illustration in common? What is it like working together when your processes are different? Do you impact each others’ work?
We are all girls, so feminine experience is our main common theme occurring in our zines and personal interests. Our work is pretty different and distinct from each other and we are all equally inspired by each other’s work. Also we have different political voices with our work and which we encourage and support!!
For Penny, it was our first time collaborating with different mediums and approaches, so it was very very challenging. These are not as strong as our individual illustration works but it was meaningful and fun to make 1 piece that all of us worked on.
How/Why did you all decide to do a collage of collaboration on each illustration?
We each picked a story and became an art director and responsible for the illustration. We made individual sketches first and assigned the other 3 members to illustrate the parts. And we added our main element and finalized it with digital collage. We decided to do this because we all work on different mediums and making it as digital collage was easy and fast way to work. We learned many things from the process since it was our first time to work this way!
Your tables at zine expos are pretty fantastic looking. What appeals to you about the zine scene?
Zine events are really friendly and easy to set up as a group. Sharing table space is financially easier in groups and also having our work on the same table is always interesting to see. We love the freedom of self publishing and zine expos are a good way of exposure. We started to meet our followers and connect with other collectives and artists.
How was your trip to TCAF? Is there anything you wish you knew before you went?
TCAF was our first international event and we prepared a lot for it as it was really big zine event.
While traveling we encountered problems between personal and professional life styles since we were living and working together for 5 days.
We also debuted our shirts and totes but TCAF was very zine friendly event and those items were not selling as much. Other than that we had a really nice table set up and got to meet many people that made us feel very happy!
What is the next step for Plum Illustration?
We want to step it up with the experimental projects..! things that are not print-based works. We want to take advantage more of unique qualities and try many things that don’t necessarily have to be categorized as illustration. And we are trying to find the balance between individual artist goals VS group goals. We want to continue to be good friends and collaborators :)
You can read the stories Plum illustrated and art directed here!
