The Influence of Old Book Illustrations on My Work

I’ve never consciously developed my illustration style. It’s something that’s always been there. As a teenager, I would draw in notebooks during school breaks — quiet scenes, people in thought, a man sitting by a window, or a landscape just after rain. I didn’t think of it as vintage-inspired back then. I was simply drawing what felt familiar.

Looking back, it’s clear how much of it was shaped by the things around me. The textures of old Danish books on our shelves. The restrained line work in European storybooks from the 1940s through the 1970s. The slightly softened edges of printed illustrations from an era when everything had a physical plate. I never studied those images formally, but I absorbed them — the way you absorb a landscape by walking through it.

There’s a kind of language in antique book art that speaks quietly. It doesn’t explain itself. It trusts you to fill in the silence. That’s something I’ve always responded to, and something I try to carry with me when I draw. I’m not trying to replicate the past — just to honour the tone. A looseness in the line. A palette that feels like it could belong to another time, but not in a self-conscious way. A scene that feels lived in, even if it’s only pencil on paper.

Sometimes the references come from Danish visual culture — the muted tones of early graphic design, or the illustrations in nature field guides we’d take on childhood walks. Other times it’s more instinctive: the feel of a certain kind of paper, or how shadows might fall across a wooden floor in winter light. I don’t try to make anything nostalgic. But memory has a texture. It shows up in the work whether I invite it or not.

Most of what I draw isn’t planned. I start with a feeling, or a rhythm, and let the image shape itself from there. A farmhouse, a corner of a table, someone pausing with their back turned. It’s never about making something perfect. It’s about making something that feels like it already existed — like you’ve seen it before, even if you haven’t.

That’s the kind of illustration I love. The kind that knows when to stop. The kind that leaves a little space around the edges.

Related: See more illustrations in my art portfolio, or read about how I build atmosphere through details in illustrating memory: 4 Vintage-Inspired Scenes from Denmark.