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Illustrator Spotlight – Carolina Marín Londoño

Sound Waves Reading 25/10/22

Growing up in Colombia, Carolina Marín Londoño always loved to draw.

After studying graphic design, Carolina moved to Argentina to study and specialise in children’s illustration.

‘Those studies started 10 years ago and since then I never stopped illustrating,’ she said.

‘Still today I continue to study the different ways to communicate an idea, a story, a feeling through images.’

The Buenos Aires-based illustrator and designer has a sensitive, fun and original style which often incorporates a watercolour aesthetic.

When the opportunity arose to work with The Illustration Room, she was happy to bring her unique style to the agency – and work with Firefly Education to illustrate our new suite of Sound Waves Decodable Readers.

Carolina illustrated seven of the Foundation books. She says one of her favourites is Mick and Rex, which tells the story of a child, Mick, who is supposed to be in bed but plays with his dinosaurs instead.

‘It was a challenge to bring Rex to life because I had never drawn dinosaurs before, so I had to look up a lot of references to make sure everything was accurate,’ she said.

‘I also had to think about how to get Mick into a fictional world with his toys and how he was going to come back out of that world when his mother told him to go back to bed.’

While working on Am I a …?, which follows a group of children as they play a guessing game, she found parallels between the characters and herself.

‘It reminded me so much of my childhood, and imagining how I would have played when I was little was a lot of fun,’ she said.

Carolina was fascinated by how the authors crafted words in such an interesting and intentional way to teach reading.

‘I love that the stories are very short and beautiful,’ she said.

‘I was very happy working on this project. It was a great team effort.’

See more of Carolina’s work on her website or Instagram.

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