Marc Sokpolie

I entered the field of illustration around 1998, when a dutch magazine called Update asked me to come and visit their office. I did a lot of paintings back then.

They asked me to do editorial illustrations after they saw my paintings in a group exhibition called ‘Cozmic’.We started out photographing custom made paintings but that wasn’t really efficient. They let me sketch some line art and then color it in Photoshop. I could just read the editorial, and make an illustration to kind of sum it up. Just line art, made with pencils and sharpies.

After a while other dutch magazines followed and I did a spread illustration for BLVD. Then I was contacted by two agencies who wanted to represent me.

Things moved fast and I got my work in a lot of international magazines, like NYLON, ESPN magazine, and even a drawing for GOTHAM magazine to go with a Spike Lee article !

The sky was the limit, I did illustrations for my favourite magazines like Vibe, the Source, and Nike advertising campaigns. A friend called me from Italy and said my drawings were on billboards.

My style was loose and in touch with the time, and some art buyers compared it to Graham Rounthwaite who was very popular among the British fashionistas.

I went to New York to update my portfolio at the agency, on Cedar street, opposite WTC, about a year before the towers collapsed. Had talks with people from Vibe magazine, went to a private party at Lenny Kravitz’ brownstone apartment.For me it was a fantastic era.

I started to gravitate towards 3d modeling to build rooms and check lighting, shadows, reflections. Also started to draw letterlogos and graphic designs. Also started using Adobe Illustrator, because sometimes clients asked for vector-style images.

FatBeats in Amsterdam had me design a couple of stickers, and a lot of DJs who bought records there put the stickers on the record crates they brought to gigs in Paradiso, Melkweg and other venues.