Did you attend art school or undertake any other formal artistic training?

I am graduated in Drawing and Animation from the Braz Cubas University in Brazil. During the course I got my first job illustrating Christian books. Was also in this course I met my now husband Henrique. Together we created an illustration studio and started to illustrate School Books and fell in love with the area. Today I can't imagine working with anything else than book illustration.

Where do you currently live and where did you grow up?

I'm from Brazil, born in the city of São Paulo. Today I live in São José dos Campos - a smaller city, but just one hour away from my home town, which I still often visit.  As brazilian, I like to make my work full of colors, with bright and sunny days.

Have you always loved to draw?

When young, I wanted to be a painter, my father used to paint and draw, and become my first teacher on the area. He had a great book collection with illustration. I loved the ones about animals and spent hours copying those classic illustrations. Besides the painting he also is a big fan of animation and was always bringing home all movie releases for us to watch. My parents has been my greatest mentors and encouragers.

How long does it take on average for you to finish a spread, from initial sketch to final colour?

For a more complex scene, I like to have one day for each step of the process. Rough, Flats and Colors. As my style today is 'lineless', I don't work with the tradicional step of inking, working from a clean rough directly to color shapes or "flats".

This way I can take my time on the composition and specially with the colors, which is my favorite part of the job.

Take us behind the scenes and describe your studio / workspace.

We turn one bedroom in a studio for two. We have the computer desks with the pen displays, where we spend most of the time, as both of us work digitally. But we also keep a third traditional desk, for when we want to study and work with pencil and papers. The studio combines all of our tastes and collections. With my Mangas, his Comics and our ArtBooks.

Which project are you most proud of?

My recently work for Collins, the Peapod Readers books. Specially "Do birds live in treehouses?" that is full with animals which is my favorite subject to draw. I got freedom to do it all on my style and love how the book turned out.

On the book a little curious girl ask her mother where the animals live. It's a very fun and colorful book!

When you are not drawing, how do you like to relax?

I’m a bit of an online gamer myself.  After the job I like to relax playing games on the computer. I also enjoy a good stretching session on the pilates class.

Animals feature heavily in children’s books – do you have a pet?

Yes, I have two pranker cats. One with 4 years and the youngest with 2. They don’t leave my side. Always sleeping next to the drawing tables. I have trouble when working traditionally as one of them is crazy about paper balls, and can’t wait to eat all the roughs he could find.