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Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants had an eclectic childhood. The illustrator and designer was born in Maui, home to Hawaii’s spectacular volcanoes and waterfalls, but grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada (different waterfalls), and now she lives in Brooklyn, New York. “I’m from a whole lot of places,” she likes to tell people. Today, Gullbrants is a full-time designer at Dame Products, a sexual wellness company, where she illustrates the brand’s monthly sex-focused horoscopes and designs packaging for the sex toys.
The illustrator graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 with what she modestly describes as a “mediocre” illustration portfolio before embarking on a series of odd part-time jobs. When she wasn’t sewing puppets or flipping crepes, Gullbrants was experimenting at home with pencil, gouache, and mixed media. In 2019, the position at Dame Products opened, and she jumped at the opportunity to illustrate such timely topics as gender identity.
Illustration for Elemental.
At Dame, she enjoys using design and illustration to educate the sexually curious. She infuses her work with effects from more traditional mediums. “I started playing around with [digital] textures and noise overlays to replicate the imperfection that I love about print and physical materials,” she says. “My desire to add a hint of texture comes from my love of editorial design, printmaking, and indie comics.”
When Gullbrants signed onto the Dame team, she discovered the beauty of editorial work through the brand’s popular sex and relationship blog, Swell. “That’s where I’ve made all the necessary failures and successes to build my illustration practice into what it is now,” she says. Soon, magazines and newspapers came calling. “One job led to another, making up my unexpected and exciting freelance career,” she says. Her soft, sensitive art — focused on nature, travel, and the human condition — has since appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, and in the science magazine Elemental. Her recent work includes grainy illustrations on themes such as loneliness, connectivity, and our relationship with the natural world — and technology.
Gullbrants’ process starts in note form. Then she sketches out rough thumbnails, settles on an idea, scans it, and uploads it to Adobe Photoshop. There, she uses the sketch as a guide to create shapes, layers, and objects while playing around with composition and color. “I’ll add and subtract shadows and highlights on separate clipping mask layers until it looks right,” she explains. “I’m always trying to ride that line of creating things that look like they interact with light and gravity in a real space, but also not overworking shades and highlights to the point of realism.”
One piece called "The Perfect Travel Buddy," commissioned for The New York Times Magazine’s Decameron Project, illustrates a short story by Paolo Giordano that was inspired by life in a pandemic. “I felt very confident and successful on the colors I landed on,” she says. “There was a very particular mood and tone within the written work that I wanted to convey.” This mood revolved around the stillness and distance of the protagonist.
Illustration for Swell.
Illustration for The New York Times Magazine’s “The Decameron Project.”
Color plays a key role in Gullbrants’ work. She often addresses sensitive topics on mental health, women’s health, tech, and science, so choosing the right palette is essential. “I feel like colors hold so much power to evoke nuanced emotions and change the tone of an illustration completely,” she says. She leans on Photoshop’s Blending Modes and embraces the color wash effect. “I can pick any number of horribly unrelated colors, and softly overlay a blue that ties everything together,” she says.
Illustration for Elemental.
“Use all the tools you have to your advantage,” Gullbrants advises. “Only by playing around with these tools did I find my process and gain a better understanding of how colors work and interact. Creating in Photoshop is about discovery, and one of the great joys of finding perfect colors is doing it by accident.”
The image at the top of this page, “How to Cope When Everything Keeps Changing,” was an illustration for The New York Times.
