Bethan Rees

Illustration

Pink and orange illustration of women in different poses
Spread from “femme”, a zine exploring queer femininity that forms part of my final project.

Hi, I’m Bethan! I’m an illustrator currently based in Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds.

I love to tell stories, represent different identities, connect with people, and be playful with my work. As an autistic and LGBT+ person, illustration has been such a powerful tool to communicate my experiences and create accessible work for others to understand or relate to.

My work takes many forms – from comics to graphic novels, to design-based work, to observational drawing – the last three years have really helped me broaden my practice and find new sources of inspiration.

My final major project consisted of some of my biggest interests – music, zines, and graphic novels. I particularly wanted to explore combining physical and digital ways of working, such as an album design project with digital and collage elements, and a risograph zine project and graphic novel. I have been particularly inspired by music and analogue technology recently too, I took a fascination with Y2K aesthetics – especially technology – for an album design project and really enjoyed exploring these themes in my work.

One of my biggest drives is to make work that people can see themselves in and connect to, and this was the case when working on my graphic novel project “Cass and Lucette” – the story of the two titular characters meeting at art school and falling in love came to mind while I was searching for comforting sapphic media after coming out as a lesbian in my second year.

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Comic page spread featuring two women on a trip to the seaside
Spread from my graphic novel project “Cass and Lucette”
Comic book spread showing two women kissing on bench
Spread from my graphic novel project “Cass and Lucette”
Collage of objects including mobile phone, CDs, stars and heart-shaped balloons
Collage created as part of my album design project – this was one of three designs that I used as illustrations for postcards and spreads of a lyric book.
Illustration of
A response to a brief about finding shapes in clouds – I found the shape of two lovers embracing, and used that to create a sapphic imagining of The Lovers tarot card.
Photo of person wearing deer mask with caption
A response to a brief involving making cardboard animal heads – a speculative album cover for “A Different Kind of Human: Step 2” by Aurora.
Sketchbook spread with drawings of Lisbon.
A sketchbook spread from the Lisbon drawing trip. This consists of different sights from an afternoon in a small square in Alcantera, from sitting in a café to sketches overlooking the bridge surrounding it.
Illustration of man under trees with birds around head and another of birds in cages
Illustrations in response to Angela Carter’s “The Erl-King”.