Who are you, and what do you do?
Hello! My name is Chloé and I'm an illustrator and designer. Growing up, I moved every couple of years because of my dad's job in the Air Force. I've lived in Ohio, the Mojave Desert, Washington DC, Okinawa, and on 3 different occasions, Texas. Currently I call Austin, Texas home. During the day I work at Mutual Mobile as a user interface designer. To me, software design is the perfect blend of art and science. I love creating organized systems of visual language across a large experience. By night I am a watercolor illustrator focused on making visual metaphors through flora and fauna.
What hardware do you use?
I use a MacBook Pro 15" paired with a small Wacom tablet. I have a gold iPhone 6 Plus. I love its big size, I use the camera all the time, and it is protected by a beautiful Rifle Paper Co. case. I also have an Apple Watch that I love - my favorite watch faces are Modular and Motion with the jellyfish.
For sketching, I use the rOtring 600 Mechanical Pencil. I usually keep one with regular black graphite and one with blue graphite for under drawings. As for erasers, I use two, a generic kneaded eraser and the Tombow Mono Zero. I prefer to use small sketchbooks that are easy to carry around, so the Global Art Material's Hand Book is my go to. For painting, the most luxurious watercolor brush I've ever used is an Isabey Squirrel Quill - they hold an insane amount of water and are great for big, solid washes.
And what software?
I use Photoshop often for UI design and color correcting illustrations. I would really love to learn how to use Sketch and After Effects.
For daily task management I use Apple's Calendar app paired with Wunderlist and Evernote. I'm always in search of the next best to-do app - you might say I'm an obsessive organizer. Always have been, just ask my Mom. She'll tell you some anecdote about my organized sock drawer as a kid.
While I paint, I am either listening to music via Spotify (big fan of the Deep Focus playlist), podcasts via Apple's Podcasts app (Roderick on the Line and Lady to Lady are my recent favs), or audiobooks via Audible (just finished Tina Fey's Bossypants and Amy Poehler's Yes Please).
And I keep up with my creative gal pals through Slack.
What would be your dream setup?
I'd love to have studio space at a co-working office so I can be around other creative people. Working from home can be lonely at times! In my dream studio space I'd want to be surrounded by way too many plants and have River, my Shetland Sheepdog, snoozing under my desk. I'm also a big fan of standing desks, so I'd need one of those as well as a sitting desk, preferably with a really fancy Herman Miller chair. While we're at it, an endless supply of Goldfish crackers would be nice!