leparadoxe

[leparadoxe]

This is me faking to give a card at a Xmas market so I can try to look good on a picture for once. I don’t know for you but as soon as I have to pose, I get weird 😅 ~ Thank you @storytellea for the 📷 and @kpunkt for the support 🤓 (à Kraftwerk Zürich) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6Gg0lHBAdO/?igshid=1ogthfvafhfop

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Cats are the fanciest. I decided to call this masterpiece “Delicatessen” in honor of all the cats licking their butt while thinking we are not looking. ~ If you wanna get the portrait of your cat licking his butt, I’m open to commissioned jobs 😊 (à Zürich, Switzerland) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2wCtGToHpE/?igshid=1mgkcwr75f95m

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Final steps to make my business cards 🚀 (à Zürich, Switzerland) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0vQW3yo1RX/?igshid=1oz90cnsemebr

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Working on a commissioned work. It’s actually the first very serious job I got and it’s pretty cool to think I’m right now working as an illustrator, doing what I like 🎉🌻 (à Zürich, Switzerland) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0S4KyAIlvv/?igshid=1jvw06qrlqk6x

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What’s the Deal, Bill?

For my first article, I wanted to share a bit about how it is to start this new life. After I came back from travel in October 2018, I finally got a cozy room in Zürich in January. I was longing to have my own space so that I could finally start doing my creative multiverse kinda business.

As much as I’m happy and thankful for having a nest and being close to my family and friends again, I realized how tricky it is to come back after such a long time of freedom, to start a new adventure that will actually be a pretty tough journey towards another kind of freedom, aka being an artist / living from my art / having a creative business.

Because I am doing illustrations, but also makes photos and have many other ideas to make, it’s been hard to define myself and my art. And it’s been hard to say the word « artist ». I almost feel like it’s a bad word in many people’s mind. Either, artists seem to be unreachable and just living from one mundane art exhibition to the other VIP event, or they are just seen as jobless lazy people living out of the reality of the world. I don’t want to be associated with the first category, and I sometimes fear that people, even close friends, consider me part of the second option. Well, for now, I find it easier to present myself as a creative, which isn’t far from what I was before, heh!

So here it is: I am a creative and I work from home to make things happen. And jeez that’s a lot of work! When you finally begin, you realize how much little details you have to think of to start a creative business and a freelance illustrator life. And it takes so much time and learning that you feel like you haven’t even started yet.

Which is why it is difficult to answer people asking me what I’m doing at the moment. It’s a very abstract thing to explain. Saying  « I do illustrations » makes people say "so you are at home and do drawings the whole day?! » and I get afraid to appear lazy. When I explain a bit deeper about the details of my work, it can be difficult to picture what I’m talking about, and why it takes so much time to reach $$$. At the question: « Are you working at the moment? Did you find a job? », the old me spontaneously says « Nope! », because I kept in mind the concept of a day job in an office. But then it strikes me that actually yes I do have a job! I just don’t get paid for it. Yet.

Believe it or not, I’m working pretty much all the time! But thanks god, I still sleep at night. I barely recognize weekdays from weekends. I know I’m not the most time-efficient person and I’m probably not productive the whole time, but I’m constantly searching for something, learning, drawing, scanning, cleaning pictures, organizing files, looking for potential futures collaborations, thinking of other artsy projects. Some days are very frustrating, some days are very productive. But the best is that even though I work continuously, at 7 am or at 10 pm, I feel passionate about it. It never feels like something I’m forced to do. And that keeps me believing that I’m doing the right thing at the moment.

[leparadoxe]

The Mock Manor ~ During my time in Portland, I stayed at the house of someone met in Melbourne. He somehow prevented me that his house wasn’t the typical kind of house but I wasn’t prepare for this 😂 This manor is very old (my friend could give better info about its history), and it’s freaking freaky. If I didn’t know the guy I was staying at, I would have think I was gonna get murdered right at the moment I passed the door. Creative peeps live in this house and they have a certain taste for darkness if I may suggest the term 😅 To be honest I barely slept the first night, and then I got to sleep in the unicorn room which was a better deal 🦄 (yes there is a unicorn room). It may be creepy, it’s also amazing to look at and search for all the creative weird details they decorated the house with, or just the architecture in itself. Have a visit of the site through my drawing 🙆🏻‍♀️ (à The Mock Manor) https://www.instagram.com/p/BvjLFi6HKiy/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1n3idvlryyxx8

[leparadoxe]

HELLOOO

Hello and welcome - for the ones who ended up on that post! My name is Noélie, I am a Swiss Art Director and I realized I was happy when drawing and creating funny concepts.

In mid-2017, I decided to quit my job in advertising to travel for a year and start doing illustrations for real, under the project Le Paradoxe. I like to tell the stories of life’s quirks and simple pleasures that resonate with people. My work is often personal, or motivated by things that happen to someone who knows someone who knows someo… ok, I guess you got the idea. I’m inspired by tasty food, nature, encounters and life. The whole sprinkled by a touch of poetry mixed with a hint of irony.

But, Le Paradoxe is more than illustrations: it’s a creative multiverse — because I’m interested in many artistic mediums and would like to do so many things in the near future. It’s a mix between illustrations about the magic and weirdness of life, photography about the ordinary, fun arty projects and soon happy-gifts objects. Basically, it’s all about life.

I made this blog to talk a bit more about me and the backstage of my creative world. I hope you’ll enjoy discovering it!