Flowering Fish

Zhiyu You is an illustrator and visual artist born in China and based in New York. Combining painting techniques and digital drawing, You’s artistic vocabulary is developed from her Chinese heritage. Her work depicts the unequal situations of women and minorities, also the relationships between humans, animals and machines.

For her Zócalo Sketchbook, You offers us a psychedelic aquarium of fish that expand and reveal themselves to symbolize her name. “In Chinese, Zhi means wildflower, Yu means fish. So I combined and expanded these two symbols to create this series,” she tells …

More In: Sketchbook

Fantastic Beasts | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Fantastic Beasts

Collette C. Curran is a concept artist and character designer who designs and illustrates for video games, clothing, children’s animation, and pinball machines. Born and raised in Southern California, she is a …

Bite-Size Shanghai

Mi Young is a Chinese Canadian illustrator currently based in New York City. Young, who often draws from her own experiences as a global citizen, loves to explore characters and their interactions …

River Blues

Penelope Dullaghan is an artist and illustrator based in Indianapolis. She works in children’s publishing, editorial, and advertising. In her work she employs a range of mediums, including printmaking, paint, …

Creature Creations | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Creature Creations

Violeta Encarnación is an illustrator and animator born and raised in Cuba, who now resides in New York City. She also works as a senior tattoo artist at Skinblu, an …

Wild Abundance

Farida Zaman is a Toronto-based illustrator and designer. Trained in fine art and illustration, she has found a wide versatility of applications of her style, which has been used in: …