This Artist Captured Her Relationship Joys In 22 Heartwarming Illustrations

Philippa’s illustrations portraying her relationship with her boyfriend were born out of an experiment. She challenged herself to create using only 3 colors, making her illustrations minimalistic, yet truly hit the mark.

“When I first started making these comics - over ten years ago now - I remember that I was mostly just interested in trying out making images using only red, black, and white. I automatically chose my real life as the subject matter, without much thought really. As I kept drawing them, I felt myself leaning into the sweet moments in my relationship with Luke as it seemed to work well with how the red and black looked. Plus, I was always trying to impress him or get his attention with my art,” shared Philippa.

Philippa has released several illustrated books, one of them being: “Soppy: A Love Story”, and a sequel “Baby: A Soppy Story”. We were wondering how Philippa came up with the name “Soppy” for her book. She shared: “When it came to the point of collecting the comics together to make a book, "Soppy" felt like a good title. Soppy means sentimental. It makes me think of puppy dog eyes and a full heart.”

We wanted to learn more about how Philippa manages to capture these beautiful moments so effectively. She shared: “I draw little moments in my sketchbook on a regular basis. If something cute or funny happens, or anything I want to remember.”

“These things come and go so quickly, but writing it down preserves it forever.”

Philippa also walked us through her creative process: “When I want to make a new comic or illustration in this style, I'll look through my sketchbooks and choose. It might be a rough sketch or just a few words. I probably will need to sketch it a few more times to plan the composition of the comic. I draw the final image in pencil first and then draw over in black ink. I have to make sure all the pencil lines are fully erased before I add the red, otherwise, the lines will show through. Then I scan the finished image and tidy it up in Photoshop.”

Philippa is not only a cartoonist, she is also an animator and a crafts person. Therefore, it is obvious that those books are not the only ones in her collection. And since Philippa has been a creator for a while now, we wanted to know how her art has evolved over the years and how she sees it evolving in the future.“I've always used multiple styles and mediums. Alongside Soppy, I also used to make a webcomic called My Cardboard Life, plus videos of animated crochet characters. I still work in a number of styles, and I still make lots of comics about real life. I made a second Soppy book which came out in 2020, which was called Baby: a Soppy Story. (You might be able to guess what it's about.) I used the same red and black style for that. Since then, I've also started making comics about my life using gouache paints. I have three children now, and I find it helpful to use more colors and textures when I'm drawing about them,” shared Philippa.

And lastly, Philippa revealed that she is working on some new projects: “I'm in the middle of working on a handful of different projects behind the scenes that I'm not quite ready (or allowed!) to talk about. I've been branching out into writing prose as well as making animated gifs and, of course, more comics. As well as Baby: a Soppy Story, I also made another book called Sister BFFs which is about me and my younger sister in our early twenties.”