How I got here
I discovered my love for drawing and painting very young. After a first career in business, I trained as a coach and as an artist, and over the years those two worlds kept folding into each other: coaching gave me a vocabulary for what colors and symbols actually do to us, and drawing gave me a way to put that into other people's hands.
Colorpini itself was born out of a difficult time. I wanted to color, but I did not have the strength to paint, so I started drawing my own pages in lineart and coloring them quietly when I could. Later I discovered how big the worldwide community of colorists actually is, and I took the courage to step into it: I opened my Etsy shop Colorpini and started my Facebook group Colorpini. The brand still rests on that first idea: coloring as a small, gentle form of creative meditation, away from stress and noise.
I was born and raised in Switzerland and I still live and work here, in a studio so small that I often draw at my dinner table, with a long list of stories I want to put on paper.
That open sketchbook next to the iPad is one of my aquarelle books. Over the years I have filled several of them with the watercolor versions of my coloring pages. They would never fit on my walls, but inside the books I can flip through them like an album and watch my own journey, my drawing and my aquarelle slowly getting better, page after page. It is a beautiful journey, and one I hope to share a little of with my coloring community.
What I make
Coloring pages. Hand-drawn A4 pages and themed 6-page coloring books, mostly portraits of women with their own little stories. I draw the lineart by hand and add the grayscale shading in Procreate, then sell them as instant PDFs on Etsy, both in pure lineart and in grayscale (the grayscale already has the shading done, which makes coloring with pencils or markers much easier).
Aquarelle. An artist's walls fill up with paintings, so I love to color my own coloring pages in watercolors and then refine them with coloring pencils. Some of those aquarelle versions live in the Drawings & Aquarelle portfolio.
Acrylic paintings. Lately I have started to bring some of my favorite coloring pages alive on canvas, in my own collage mixed media style: layers of printed lineart and book pages on paper, glued onto canvas and then painted over in acrylic. You can see them on the Paintings page.
Illustrations. Book covers, interior illustrations, plus posters and props for film. A summary lives on the Illustrations page.
By hand, not by prompt
Every line of my coloring pages is drawn by me, by hand. No AI image generators, no "style of" prompts. I do my own sketching, my own grayscale work, my own painting. If you would like the long version of why that matters to me, I wrote about it on the Illustrations page.
What I take on (and what I don't)
Yes, please: book covers and interior illustrations, posters and concept artwork for film and theatre, branding for small independent presses, anything where my style fits and we have time to do it properly.
Not quite right: pet portraits, family photo recreations, tattoo design, NFT projects, or "redo this in the style of" jobs. Nothing personal, they just are not where my work shines.
If you are not sure whether your project fits, just ask. I would rather have a short conversation than turn down something I would have loved.
Where to find me
I share my coloring pages and my aquarelle colorings on my Colorpini Facebook page and on Instagram Pinterest as @colorpini. The Colorpini coloring group is the warmer, busier side of things: that is where the monthly free page lives, where colorists post their finished pieces, and where the favourites get celebrated. The whole shop sits on Etsy.
What's next
I am working on a fairy tale book. Each story grows out of one of my coloring page drawings, like a hidden world unfolding behind the figure. We will see where it leads and when I can bring it out. In the meantime the Colorpini group keeps growing, and I plan to keep the monthly event running for as long as I can. If you would like to follow along, the easiest way is to join the group or sign up for the email reminder.