Beegee Tolpa

With a Montessori school teacher mother as one of her early mentors, living in South Carolina, Beegee was taught a carefree and fresh approach to life. This is clearly reflected in her art and illustrations, which have a young, playful and approachable look.
"We had an art room in our house, where I was always cutting my hands with woodblock tools and making little play-dough sculptures. At that time, I thought I wanted to be an interior designer, since I would rearrange my bedroom at least once a week; continually making little books and covering them with wallpaper scraps."

Matisse’s playful cutouts and paintings also had an impact on Beegee, as did the illustrations of Miroslav Sasek, a Czech artist and illustrator from the 1950s, best known for his This is series of children’s books. A graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York city, Beegee initially studied furniture design as she loves “making something useful”, but dropped out after the first week since she claims that she is “not precise nor am I a perfectionist. I like mistakes, which is how my work is so playful.”
She quickly switched to illustration and began studying printmaking extensively at Parsons. She also used to draw with crayons and watercolours in the life-drawing studios. But computer classes were not de riguer at that time, so she entered the workforce with no formal skills. Her computer skills are largely self-taught and through using certain programs to design corporate logos, she began experimenting with her own illustrations in a digital format. I sketch quickly on the computer with the mouse - I don't even own a Wacom Tablet- and then use the same file to make the final illustration. I just work on top of the sketch, filling in colours and embellishing. That way it retains the loose fun quality of the original sketch. And it's so fast, I am able to turn things around quickly and make changes very easily. She now works regularly for clients such as the Nick Jr. website. Her playful and wholesome approach ideally suits illustrations for travel and family scenes.

A range of felt-collage pillows, designed, made and marketed by Beegee Tolpa

Logos for sports, and her background in publishing and photo editing have also left a mark on her work, which is spontaneous and fresh and open, like the relaxed lifestyle of her adoptive city, Seattle, which also has an influence on her work. I lived in New York for years, but sometimes would find myself so over stimulated that I couldn't focus on anything. When I moved to Seattle I was able to afford the cost of setting up my own studio and still keep my New York clients. Plus new clients from all over the world.

She is passionate about children's books and projects and sees herself becoming more involved in this area in the future. Even as a child she and her sister were always creating books and making up stories and adventures. They still work together on projects, Beegee doing the illustrating and her sister doing the writing. Beegee has several book ideas, in the pipeline. most notably one of a little girl, Rapunzel, and her many adventures.
She is collaborating on several projects with her sister Eve, a writer and editor based in Santa Fe, New Mexico that she hopes to have published. The anatomy book for kids There's a Lemur on my Femur, the color book Things You can do with Blue, a workbook for the older sibling when a new baby comes into the world, a USA travel guide and adventure pack for kids.

But her niche, her main target group is tweens, the pre-teen set. This happened by chance but she now enjoys this age group with their innovative outlook and young ideas. She is currently in the process of completing a new project with Scholastic, a math activity book for third graders, which is quite ironic for a girl who disliked math with a passion when she was in school.If she had been better at it, she might still be in furniture design!

As a computer-savvy artist and also an artist who is supremely professional despite her self-proclaimed playful approach to her work, Beegee is well placed to fulfill briefs for clients worldwide as the growing list in her CV indicates. An artist with a relaxed approach but a joy to deal with.