My name is Kerstin aka Anjizilla and I’m an illustrator and crochet pattern designer located in the Upper Palatinate of Bavaria in the south of Germany. I’m originally from Berlin but I moved to Bavaria 10+ years ago after I got my vocational technical diploma in arts. I’m working as a media designer with my main focus set on email marketing.
What influences my work
What influences my work most is my love for anything Japanese since my early teenager days. It all started with snail mail pen pals when I was 12 years old. I’m fascinated by the language, the contrast of old and new and the overall nature of Japan. I do often think that I was born in the wrong country.
I was also around that age, when I fell in love with the works of Studio Ghibli by listening to the original soundtrack of Princess Mononoke. Long before I had the chance to finally see it in theaters.
Thanks to my gamer parents I got in contact with video games early, having the Nintendo NES and SNES, Game Boy and later on the Sony PlayStation to share with my parents and my younger brother. Games like Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Lufia series, Secret of Mana, Soul Blazer and Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII had a deep impact on me.
I got into crochet in 2012 thanks to the first book of Twinkie Chan: Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodies (Amazon link). Her short instructions for standard crochet stitches on the first pages made it so easy to get into it!
I’m a sucker for art books and my favourite ones are from Heikala and Koyamori. I can highly recommend checking out their amazing art books The Art of Heikala: Works and Thoughts (Amazon link) and Grow: The Art of Koyamori (Amazon link). They are both so inspiring artists!
My preferred materials, tools and art supplies
I love to use Schachenmayr Catania (Amazon link) and Catania Grande (Amazon link) especially for doing Amigurumi. It‘s a high quality cotton yarn available in a big range of gorgeously vibrant colours and it’s super easy to work with. The ergonomic Addi Swing (Amazon link) hooks are my favourite crochet hooks. They even help me to crochet a bit more loosely as I tend to crochet extremely tight.
For my digital art I’m using an iPad Pro 2018 in 12,9“ with the new iPad pencil and Procreate.
For my traditional art it varies still as I’m just getting into it more seriously. I love using my Copic Sketch (Amazon link) markers but I try to get more into watercolours and gouache lately using sets of Prima Marketing (Amazon link), Schmincke (Amazon link) and Winsor & Newton Cotman (Amazon link). For my line art I mainly use Sakura Pigma Micron (Amazon link) in sizes 0.1 and 0.3. I will update this once I got more into it!
I love Bunnies!
Well, not only bunnies in particular as I have a big heart for all animals but I own two naughty but super adorable bunnies myself.
