Hand-Drawn
Illustration
Create a Visual Story
Illustration & Branded Elements
All businesses begin with a logo, but it’s through story, messaging, and identity that the brand begins to feel authentic and memorable. Brand elements can be created in a variety of approaches, from unique illustration that is hand-drawn or digitally-rendered to stock illustration that captures an existing look and feel that can be recolored or integrated into existing artwork.
Uniquely Yours
Hand-Drawn, Digital Editing
Digitally-Designed + Vector
Stock Illustration
Illustration or Photo Stock
Altered or Colorized Stock
Illustration Feature
Met Council Environmental Services
Sustainable Landscapes Restoration Project
Design for the Arts worked with MCES to illustrate and design communications materials for their Sustainable Landscape Restoration Project. This multi-year plan incorporates pollinator gardens, bee lawn, and native prairie plantings into Met Council’s properties throughout seven counties in the Twin Cities region.
The project’s signature image —an ink-drawn illustration, digitally-colored and refined—features an American Goldfinch and the endangered Rusty-Patched Bumble Bee, along with two of the bees host plants—wild geranium and butterfly milkweed. Interpretive signs I designed feature my illustrations of a natural landscape with flowers, plants, and birds native to Minnesota. These signs are permanently installed at each site when sustainable landscapes are fully-established.
Illustration Feature
Coming Soon
Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
As a Minnesota Master Naturalist Volunteer, I love creating visual and written stories that elevate ecological relationships between trees, plants, wildflowers, mosses, and living creatures. This illustration (coming soon) was created for Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower to commemorate what would have been Eloise Butler’s 175th birthday.
With this volunteer project, I produced a hand-drawn illustration with digital color and finishing applied. A Limited-Edition print reproduction will be gifted to the Garden’s nature center and to the organization for auction. The illustration will be also printed on the cover of their Summer, 2026 newsletter. The organization generously granted permission for me to print and sell additional prints, linked here when available. The story I crafted for this drawing follows.
Eloise Butler — Bog Trotter
Celebrating 175 Years—Visionary of Preserving Wild Spaces
Established in 1907 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary became the first public wildflower garden in the US. With a vision to preserve a “Wild Botanic Garden,” botanist, teacher, and “Bog-Trotter” Eloise Butler became the Garden’s first Curator. The first species transplanted was the Purple Pitcher Plant. Eloise Butler: Bog-Trotter & Visionary of Preserving Wild Spaces, Karen Kopacz, 2026. Originally hand-drawn in ink, this limited-edition print reproduction was created for Friends of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden to commemorate Eloise Butler’s 175th birthday, August 3rd, 1851.
Illustration Feature
Foxglove Market
Local flora drawings with just the right attitude.
Illustrated Elements
Ink-drawn and vectorized illustrated elements are a trademark feature of Foxglove Market’s identity. This hand-drawn approach resonates with owner Christine’s mission for selling exclusively local, chemical-free flowers and flora. Her model for reducing impact is creating waves nationally toward an environmentally-conscious floral movement.
The “Harvested Here” icon, along with thoughtfully-crafted messaging, connects the Foxglove Market mission with customers that support the value of local and chemical-free.
