There’s an illusion in the work of JooHee Yoon that feels like you’ve walked into someone’s dream—and found your own memory in the margins. Yoon, born in South Korea and working in Brooklyn, blends etching, drypoint, coloured pencil and collage into illustrations that don’t just depict worlds—they whisper them.

She describes her recent turn to printmaking as “amazing and very different to anything else,” and you can see exactly what she means. With etching plates and drypoint needles, she scratches not just images but moods—diamond-shaped figures holding potted plants, bulbous creatures devouring peers, scenes half familiar, half uncanny. The lines are sharp. The textures are rich. These aren’t flat illustrations; they feel like layered thoughts you can almost trace with your fingertip.

Yoon’s process is as much about what happens beneath the surface as above it. She uses communal print-shops, experiments across media, and often works in hybrid forms—printed plates become coloured pencil renderings, drawings become collaged forms, every piece participating in a kind of visual echo chamber. The results feel deeply personal yet universal: you might not know exactly who the figure is, but somewhere you know what they feel. Loneliness, metamorphosis, tension between what we show and what we hide.

Her characters often appear paused in mid-motion, or mid-metamorphosis. One piece might show a figure whose head blooms into foliage, another where the body is a constellation of textures, color and line. They’re metaphorical but lived-in. They reflect Yoon’s interest in identity, transformation, and the quiet power of craft. She once noted that using etching felt counterintuitive, but thrilling—the “scratched” image carries its own ghost of the process. You can see the tool’s trace, the pull of ink, the press of paper.

What draws me into Yoon’s work is the mix of restraint and wildness. The compositions are clean, carefully composed—but they hold surprises. A small figure slips out of frame. A background pattern pulses. The colour palette might be muted and elegant, but the form is off-kilter, a little stretched, a little shimmering. It’s in that tension—between the tidy and the strange—that her magic lives.

Another layer: her interest in children’s books and storytelling. Yoon’s visuals feel narrative even when they don’t carry words. You walk into a single illustration and you immediately create the “just… before” and the “just after.” She uses printmaking and drawing as story engines. In the world of children’s publishing, where visuals often sit pleasingly alongside text, Yoon’s illustrations elevate both craft and concept—they invite pause, they encourage wonder.

In an era of digital immediacy, Yoon reminds us of the quiet power of the analogue. Etching plates, drypoint lines, hand-coloured pencils—these are tools that ask for time and attention. Her visuals reward that patience. They aren’t instant—they unfurl.

So if you’re ready to slow down for a moment, to step into an illustration that’s less finished and more felt, take a detour into JooHee Yoon’s world. Visit her at jooheeyoon.com and let the textures speak for themselves.