Every stroke is inspired by a singular belief:
YOU and every creature, plant, and molecule
in this big, beautiful universe
ARE MAGICAL.

Let me tell you a secret.

I can’t see images in my mind. It’s called aphantasia. When I close my eyes and try to picture an image, it’s just blackness.

The conversation usually goes like this:

ME: I don’t see images in my mind.

OTHER: Wait. What?!

ME: When I close my eyes and try to think of, say, an enchanted forest, I don’t see anything.

OTHER: But you’re an artist! *shocked and appalled* How can you possibly make art?

Yes, it’s true. I can’t. Until a few years ago, I thought “visualizing” was just a fancy word for “imagining,” but now I know better. It makes sense, though, why I lead with words (which I hear plenty in my mind!), symbols, and most of all feeling.

I use pen and ink, and sometimes watercolor (both traditional watercolor and digital in Photoshop). I might feel my way through sketches, starting from ideas, symbols, a concept, or a wild passion I can’t excavate from my looping brain. Or I might push around references in Photoshop until it feels like it clicks, and sketch from there, embellishing on the reference as instinct dictates.

As I moved from digital to traditional artwork, that instinct kept leading me back to the intricate pen lines of the Golden Age of Illustration, the storybook charms of watercolor wash, the expressiveness of modern folkloric illustration combined with nature illustration: hares escaping the rabbit burrow they never belonged in, red wolves transforming from big bad wolves to honored kin, blue birds as angel messengers. For a long time, I circled that aesthetic from the outside, working in commercial styles for other people.

For most of my career, my writing and my drawing have lived apart. I’d write a book, then design covers for someone else’s. But now, the illustrations are starting to belong to the stories, and the stories are starting to ask for the illustrations. It feels like the way it was always supposed to be.

Here are some recent pieces (some products, some book illustrations):

If you’d like to bring something home, my Etsy shop, 11 Storybook Lane, has giclée prints, accordion cards, greeting cards, and bookmarks. Each piece is hand-drawn, never AI-generated, made in small batches from my studio.

Thanks for visiting.

Hugs & Magic,

Mande

P.S.

For inquiries or commissions, contact me at mande@mandematthews.com

If you’re an author or publisher looking to commission me, visit my sister website at AMDesignStudios.net