Each month we invite a creative from Behance to curate our social feed for a week. This month’s Guest Curator is self-taught digital illustrator and animator Alina Bohoru. 

Bucharest-based illustrator Alina Bohoru describes herself as a “compulsive drawer.” She recalls getting her first graphics tablet at age 17: “The discovery of Photoshop, digital art and online portfolios completely blew my teenage mind at that time. Gradually, my artworks started to transition from traditional to mixed media, and eventually to digital exclusively.” 

Watermelon Voyage by Alina Bohoru

Alina went on to pursue a degree in English and German translation studies in university but she found herself leaning into her creative tendencies: “I was spending a lot of time (and occasionally skipping German grammar courses!) building up my portfolio.” Her work was getting noticed and steadily, a freelance career was starting to take shape. “By the time of graduation, I had been offered a job at an illustration studio in Bucharest, and that introduced me to new things like working in a team or dealing with clients and deadlines.” 

After two years, Alina decided to branch out on her own, transitioning back to being a full time freelance illustrator. These days, she works on a wide range of projects from editorial illustrations to packaging designs and collaborative animations.

Break of Dawn by Alina Bohoru

“There’s definitely all kinds of struggles: not knowing if you’re going to make it or not, the rise from the ‘underdog’ jobs to a real career, and finding your true voice,” Alina admits. “But on the other side, there’s also an immense sense of purposefulness, being able to do what you’re meant to be doing, and luckily, making a living out of it. Having a magical way to express yourself, with the freedom of working on your own terms.”

Portraits by Alina Bohoru

Alina’s colorful illustrations vibrate with energy and have caught the eyes of international clients including Samsung, Xbox, BBC Radio 1, and more. She summarizes her color process as “purely intuitive.” “I often go with the flow and choose colors based on my mood in that moment. My emotional landscape often sets the tone of what the palettes or compositions will look like before making any conscious decision about them.” 

With commercial projects, she often has to take the client’s guidelines into consideration, but this too is a challenge she welcomes: “Every palette that pulls me out of my comfort zone is always a wonderful exercise for me.”

Magic Spoon x Sway LA by Alina Bohoru

One of Alina’s most memorable projects is a two-part solo show that was held throughout Bucharest and Timisoara in the summer of 2020. For this ambitious exhibition, Alina combined illustration, AR/VR, 3D modeling, inflatable installations, animation, and video mapping, to bring her art to life. 

“In Bucharest, we used solely outdoor spaces, windows and building facades, dividing the setups into different concepts and mediums. Two months later, we shipped everything to the second location in Timisoara, a former tram depot turned museum,” Alina explains. “This project was hardcore but truly exciting introduction into the much more experimental environment of new media arts, applied to my illustrations.”

One Night Gallery by Alina Bohoru

“Behance turned out to be a pivotal tool in my creative process so far,” says Alina. She first started sharing her work to Behance over a decade ago, while she was in high school. “It started more as a way to keep track of my work and share some of it online. Fast-forward a few years later, many of my coolest and most important jobs come through this platform. And it’s a source of inspiration for some of the best and newest art and design work that’s out there.” 

See all the projects from Alina’s moodboard

While curating her moodboard, Alina leaned into her gut instinct: “My focus was finding that warm, tingly stomach sensation that you get when you discover a piece of really amazing work.” 

One of the projects Alina included in her moodboard is a piece by the illustrator and graffiti artist Smithe, which she pinpoints as one of her favorite Behance projects of all time: “I’ve always been a big fan of Smithe. His amazing artworks, intricate lines and perspectives, his detailed combinations of anatomy with technology have always had a big influence on me. This one’s a beautiful piece that definitely leaves me with a hopeful feeling.”

Lead Us by Smithe

“I love these sculptures for their incredible level of craft and detail: the faces, the armor, the postures, the way they embody the idea of balance,” says Alina of Wang Ruilin’s sculptures of the Monkey King. “The contrast between the strong poses and fluidity of their flowing sleeves and clouds, as if you can almost feel the air movement around them.” 

True and False Monkey King by Wang Ruilin

Follow us on Instagram this week as we share more projects from Alina’s moodboard and give you an inside look at her creative process. You can see more projects by Alina on Behance.