Monica Ramos X The New Bohemians

When I first came across the work of Monica Ramos I gasped out loud. It was this painting that I saw floating down my Pinterest feed and I was stopped in my tracks–I found myself immediately googling, tumblring and pinteresting all of her work that I could find.

When it came time to design the end-pages for my book  I wanted it to have a wow-factor and feel really special.  I new I wanted a hand-drawn element, and so I emailed Monica totally out of the blue (#BoldMoves) to ask if she took commissions. I have never commissioned an artist to do anything like this for me before and it was a really exciting prospect, and also a little bit scary. I was so thrilled when she said yes.

To get her started, I sent her a handful of my favorite images from the book and asked her to reference the images without being too literal and I told her that I wanted something with “people, textiles and plants”. After we dealt with contracts and the like, she then send me four sketches, and I chose this one:

When, a few days later, I received the colored version, I got really, really happy.

One of the most fun things to do is to find all of the book’s references in her illustration. For example, the clothing on the people are all inspired by different patterns found in bathroom tiles, rugs and textiles in the book. And I love how the illustration peeks out on either side of the book when it’s open:

 

To see more of Monica’s inspiring world, peruse her Tumblr. Pre-order your copy of The New Bohemians, Cool and Collected Homes featuring this beautiful illustration at any of these stores:
Barnes & Noble | Indiebound.org | Books-A-Million  | Powells Books | Abrams | Amazon

The book comes out in just a few weeks!