Bold and beautiful 'real women' take centre stage in Sylwia Kubus's latest series of illustrations

Describing herself as an illustrator, visual artist and animation director, Kubus is originally from Poland where she graduated from Polish Filmschool and Animationsinstitut in Ludwigsburg. She moved to Berlin in 2005 where she has since established work in both illustration and motion. Her clients include BMW, Warner Bros., and UFA.

Like many of us, she has spent the last 18 months facing unprecedented lockdowns and restrictions, as the world fights Covid-19. She turned to her iPad as a way to get through it, creating a series of illustrations of women and "sisterhood" with diversity at their core and realistic body shapes with a little nostalgia for the 1980s. In them, we see what life is like in Berlin: commuting on the U-Bahn, taking up the current rollerskating craze, and enjoying some outdoor swimming perhaps, at one of the city's open-air pools.

"The variety of forms combined with strong colours make the images look dynamic," Kubus tells Creative Boom. "Protagonists of these artworks present themselves either in their everyday surroundings, like being in a shopping mall or taking a train while being surrounded by some abstract pattern. The depicted women look confident and self-aware. I hope my illustrations inspire women to have more self-confidence and encourage them to love themselves as they are."

Kubus shares her artworks on her Instagram feed where she also takes part in Tess Smith-Roberts and Zena Kay's Still Here, Still Life weekly life drawing challenge. Discover more at sylwiakubus.com.