ABOUT YEWBERRIES
Art By @yewberries on Instagram
“In elementary school, I became obsessed with the show, Sonic X, so I drew myself and my friends as hedgehog characters in my own Sonic-inspired fantasy world, of course, giving elemental powers to each of them. Throughout high school and college, I was constantly making fantasy characters with friends and drawing interactions and scenarios between them.
My motivation to improve my art came from wanting to put our characters in cool illustrations and make better art for my friends. My first two years of college were in a pre-med track, but I eventually had an identity crisis and realized my real passion was still in art, so I made the big switch to becoming an illustrator! I work digitally, specifically with Clip Studio Paint and Procreate. For fun, I enjoy sketching with multicolored ballpoint pens.
When I’m not working, you’ll find me spending time with my extroverted toothless senior cat named Mango or sculpting polymer clay figurines of my D&D characters.”
Where do you find inspiration
for your designs?
Very generally, high fantasy and magical realism are the genres that inform my work the most. Probably my most fool-proof source of inspiration is strong emotions, which I try to distill and weave into my artwork. However, what gets me excited to create art could be the sound of someone’s laugh, the way the light falls on a shiny surface, or the textures of a wood carving at an antique shop. Kaleidoscopic colors, mosaics, and stained glass also tickle my brain in just the right spot. I’m a tactile person, so I’m constantly picking up things and running them through my hands, but I’m a visual person too, so it can kind of come from anywhere!
YEWBERRIES X OWLCRATE
Celia (@yewberries) is the artist behind:
- The bound-in character art pages (one per book - along with @jessichenliu and @yasu.art.studio who worked on the other two) in the OwlCrate limited editions of A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, and A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
- The foiled end pages in the OwlCrate limited edition of Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake, which was featured in the April 2025 'Dramatic Disasters' Adult Fantasy box
- The reversible dust jacket on the OwlCrate limited edition of The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer, which was featured in the November 2025 'Ghostly Illusions' Young Adult Fantasy box
"To create the endpapers for Olivie Blake’s Gifted & Talented, I gathered three of my friends to dress up in business professional clothes and pose for reference photos! It was my first time directing a mini photoshoot, and their first time participating in one. I thought of them every time I worked on the illustrations! It was also very fun to capture the characters’ sibling rivalry, especially in their expressions."
What are some of your favorite
books or authors?
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Babel by R.F. Kuang, and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty.
