Brofoz
We all like to complain about the algorithm, but if we’re honest, most of the time it gets it right. On three different platforms, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, the algorithm showed us the same video of an artist doing an oil pastel portrait, and we’re glad we did because it was funny and we really liked the style. Before we knew it we’d watched at least 20 of their videos, which made the algorithm happy, and ever since it’s shown us lots of other oil pastel videos, and it’s made us really want to dig out our oil pastels too!
Written by Creative Stories
26/09/2025
Photos and Cover image provided by Brofoz
The artist is Brofoz, an American who is living in London. She starts her videos by saying ‘This is day XX of becoming a professional illustrator,’ as of writing this Brofoz is on day 67. Their videos have become a part of our daily scroll, “Firstly, as much as I would like to claim the ‘every day’ status, I'm usually only doing about 2-4 oil portraits a week, rather than 7,” Brofoz tells us.
After consuming lots of their videos and doing whatever kind of deep dive we were able to do, we wondered why Brofoz was saying ‘becoming a professional illustrator’ at the start of their videos because to us it already looks like they are…
Brofoz finds it hard to define how long she’s been an illustrator, “This is a surprisingly difficult question because I can be quite hard on myself in terms of when my work became valid enough for me to claim the term 'illustration.' Are my drawings from when I was 5, 'illustrations?' Because if so, I've been doing this over 20 years.”
She’s been drawing from a young age, spending a lot of her childhood drawing in the spare room with her mum and sister, in their hometown of Boise, Idaho. It seems her mum has been her biggest fan since then, “That room is now filled (and I mean so filled you can't see the wall) with mine and my sister's artwork throughout our life. My mom is definitely my source for discovering art.”
In 2019 she switched her degree from elementary education to graphic design, wanting to focus on how her art could become a career, “if I want to be slightly more technical about it all, I'd say I started illustrating with the purpose of being an illustrator around 2019.”
We’ve talked with many artists, creatives and makers at Creative Stories and almost all of them struggle to define what it is they do, calling themselves an Artist or Designer or whatever, seems like a title they haven’t earned yet.
“In my day job, I am an illustrator and designer for a tabletop board game company called 'Camden Games.' That's my go-to answer. But when someone asks me 'what I do' in relation to my traditional art journey, it gets complicated. There is a lot of pressure to say ‘I'm an artist!’ Instead, it comes out like ‘...ohh, umm, well, I do art.’ It's still hard. But I'm getting there!”
In her latest video series she’s moved away from digital art and started using a more traditional medium, saying the switch was intimidating at first, “There's no double tap, no command Z. I had many people in my life suggest I simply just move to pen and paper, but still, that felt too permanent. My need for perfection was too strong. I felt like I needed my work to look good. It wasn't until years later that I realised, although my work was starting to look good visually, it didn't make me feel anything. So, what's the point?”
Even with the switch to oil pastels her style remains consistent, it kind of reminds us of old Nickelodeon cartoons from the 90s, but with bolder colours. “I would describe my style as bright, bold and unafraid of being itself. I like the idea that my work can be quite funny and charming at first glance, but the longer you look, the more unsettled you may become. I think the nature of my work is rooted in curiosity, which adds to the oddity.”
In this new series of portraits, most of the characters start life in a small sketchbook that she captures quickly whilst on her commute to work, “because I didn't want them to notice me, I'd look at them once and then give myself 10 seconds to draw them. My sketchbook started filling up with all these different faces. I would always wonder where they were headed, if they liked their life, if they had any weird quirks about them. I would tell myself stories as I drew them. I thought, hey, this might be a fun series.”
With so many people to choose from it must be hard to know who it draw, “I've become quite picky. This is gonna sound brutal, but some people are just more interesting looking than others. Again, horrible, but the judging of the person definitely begins in the moment as I sketch in my small sketchbook.”
This then lends itself back to her style through her curiosity about who they might be, “most of my portraiture work has an almost dark feeling to it as a natural result of my unknowing. But because I use colours that are so bright your eyes might fall out, lots of people first claim the work as ‘cute.’ I don't mind this comment at all though. I love contrast. Not only in visual work but in thought.”
One of the things we love about the videos is watching the portrait appear whilst hearing the backstory, because although it’s sometimes unexpected there’s always an element of either we know someone or we’ve heard of someone like that, and we guess that relatability is what’s making the series a success, “Most of my voice-overs are one take and never pre planned. Each portrait takes about 45 minutes and it gives me the time to really connect to the person. By the time I'm finished, I'm more emotionally attached than I am willing to admit. Then once it's time to record my voice, it is me word-vomiting on the spot. I don't like to write down notes or record thoughts immediately after seeing someone [in real life]. Giving myself time away from the person allows me to imagine them more as a character, rather than an actual person. This distance allows me to feel morally correct in being a bitch. A lot of my stories are nice, but not all of them, haha! Because my style is so exaggerated, you would absolutely never be able to see one of my portraits and know exactly who I drew. Instead, they're quite vague which makes it fun to engage with. I get a lot of comments saying things like ‘This looks like my aunt!’ or ‘Oh, I totally knew someone like this in high school…' or ‘I fear she is me.’ People can relate to it.”
Social media has become a necessity for most professions these days, and the thought of an artist not having a presence online is unthinkable, but it’s a love hate relationship with most artists, “a large part of my artistic pursuit is connected to social media and content creation, which, you could argue, is a bad thing. But for me, I see my content as mixed media. I get to illustrate, video edit and then also story tell verbally through a voiceover in each 45 second video.”
However, the video series is doing wonders for her social media following, having been stuck under a thousand followers for 6 years, even with posting consistently, she’s now over 30,000 followers in a few months, “I think in the past I saw followers as a coin of legitimacy in being an artist, which, yeah, I guess it absolutely helps in that arena. But more so, I now see my following, specifically on Instagram, as my community. I love reading their comments and seeing repeat profiles engaging. Call this a toxic trait, but my motivation in opening my eyes in the morning is because I can't wait to run to the comment section. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's rough. Especially because my style comes across so youthful. Lots of ‘Oh, my 10 year old grandson could do that.’ But hate comments are a badge of honour. I'm relevant enough to hate, which is amazing. It's not just my friends hyping me up anymore. It's random grandmas trying to burn down my tent.”
Working on the series has solidified Brofoz’s love for portraiture and using people as a source of inspiration, “I always knew this about myself, but if there was any doubt, that's been squashed. More importantly, I've discovered a love for verbal storytelling and using my voice as part of the artwork. I think what has been most surprising is that others seem to like it too! For YEARS I've been avoiding speaking in my social media videos. It's so scary. But i've noticed I actually love doing it and my engagement on social media absolutely skyrocketed. I have a community of followers who enjoy my content and it's really weird. I love them all.”
Brofoz reckons the current portrait series will be done when she reaches day 100, and she’d love to do an exhibition of them all together, “I actually do have plans of exhibiting and selling this series, ideally before the end of the year. I am in talks with a gallery right now, but nothing is official yet. I have about 40 portraits in my closet and I need to break out my winter jackets, so, they gotta go…”
So if there’s any galleries or spaces reading and you’d like to put on the show, get in touch with her, I know we’d like to see them in person.
Although it will be sad to see this series end, we are excited to see what Brofoz does next as it seems like she is just on the start of her journey, “The series takes up all of my personal illustration time, and there are some new ideas I want to try out. I'll still be posting in the same consistency, but just experimenting with some new techniques. I've also been enjoying illustrating animals and have posted a few here and there in my current series. I'd also like to incorporate a bit more storytelling into the work itself, rather than solely relying on voiceovers. Mainly, though, I think the next goal is to work super large-scale. My partner and other flatmates are going to kill me.”
We asked Brofoz if there’s anything else she’d like to declare and it made us happy to hear what she said as we are always trying to encourage more people to do art, “I think one of my main purposes for posting on social media is for people to watch my progress and hopefully be inspired to start a creative journey of their own. I still have a long, long, long, long way to go. But if you're reading this and want to get serious about an art career, I promise you there is no better time to start than this exact moment.”
We’d like to thank Brofoz for taking the time to chat with us, there was a lot of great stuff that didn’t get in the article so we’ve posted the Q&A here.
