Who is Papierzucker?

Hi, I am Laura, a former freelance illustrator from Berlin who loves fantastic and surreal elements (I gave up my freelance work in 2025 due to competition from AI). My greatest inspiration is nature. Many of my works include animals and plants. I would describe my style as lively, colorful and suitable for children, but I also create simple and elegant illustrations. What I don’t do are hyper-realistic drawings or portraits. Apart from drawing and painting I also carve my own stamps and create patterns from my illustrations.

Have I sparked your interest? Do you have an idea or a project you want me to bring to life? If so, send an e-mailto info@papierzucker.de or message me via this form:

My Techniques

I also like experimenting with different materials and combining them. I especially enjoy working digitally or using alcohol-based markers, colored pencils and watercolor. Occasionally,  I also work with gouache,acrylics oradd little pieces of hand lettering to my illustrations.

Digital Work

When I need to plan beforehand or when I know I’ll have to make a lot of changes and corrections during the process, I prefer working digitally. It’s much more flexible, not only regarding feedback rounds but also the work location. Since I use Procreate on the iPad Pro it’s so convenient to just pull it out of your bag and start drawing pretty much everywhere – on the train, in a park or during lunch breaks.

However, even though these are some quite strong advantages over traditional techniques, I’d never completely quit using traditional methods. I just love how a pen feels on paper or colors flow into each other (sometimes unpredictably). Moreover, most of my digital painting strategies are derived from traditional drawing techniques. If I had never tried working with gouache, watercolors or colored pencils, my digital illustrations would probably look completely different from how they do now.

Dry Techniques

For my drawings I mostly use markers and colored pencils. Drawings that were made with alcohol-based markers are very even and vibrant. Because there are so many different colors available, I can create an unlimited number of shades and tones. Furthermore, marker groundings go perfectly with detailed pencil shading. This way, you get very saturated eye-catching illustrations.

Wet Techniques

For my paintings I like to work with watercolors and gouache, from time to time also with acrylics. With watercolor you can create pretty effects. For example, the wet-in-wet technique allows you to let different colors flow into each other resulting in different blends, fringes and shapes. The combination with other materials is also possible. Sometimes I even use silver metallic acrylics for special effects and a nice finishing touch.

Carving Stamps

A very special gift for friends and family are hand-carved stamps. I really like to give them away as a little present. They are so versatile. You can do lettering, images, background stamps and more. For my stamps I use unmounted blue rubber stamps and cutting tools for linocutting. Often these handmade stamps look a bit wonky, but that’s what I love about them. You can see that they are handmade and have a special  charm.

Patterns

Hand-drawn images can be turned into beautiful repeating patterns with image editing softwares, making them a perfect design element for different surfaces. You can print them on laptops or smartphone cases, bedclothes, pillows, clothing, book covers etc.