Illustration Portfolio

In this illustration portfolio, you will find a selection of client-commissioned illustrations and projects, featuring illustrated recipes, illustrated maps, Italian food illustrations, and more.

Food and Travel Illustration with a Cultural Flavour

About the illustrator

Ruba Saqr is a Jordanian freelance illustrator who creates food and travel illustrations for clients, art directors and publishers looking to commission culturally-informed artwork with a handmade quality.

Inspired by her travels to over 20 countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, Ruba’s hand-drawn line illustrations convey an acute attention to cultural flavour.
Filled with details that celebrate culinary heritage and folkloric diversity and identity, her illustration style conveys a fascination with the ingredients, motifs and patterns that spell out a location’s cultural personality.

Areas of expertise

Due to her multicultural background, Ruba Saqr has a solid grasp of the Italian cuisine and lifestyle as well as the gastronomic and native traditions of Arab communities in the Levant and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region). These include: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Morocco, among others.

Her keen interest in tangible and intangible cultures enables her to create custom illustrations for clients in Italy, Europe, and Asia. The illustrator also speaks Arabic, English and some basic Italian words and phrases (especially in relation to food and travel).
With clientele in publishing, the hospitality sector, governmental organizations, and NGOs, Ruba is currently based in Jordan, with clients in Italy and the UK.

More about the Illustrator

Selected Illustration Clients

Illustration Style & Technique

Ruba works in pen-and-ink – as she has a broad collection of pens, nibs, and ink colours to choose from – and loves to draw by hand. She also works in a range of other analogue media, including watercolour, gouache, alcohol markers and acrylic pens. Although she does introduce digital elements to some of her artwork, she prefers analogue illustration techniques for an unmistakable hand-drawn feel.

For client work, the illustrator digitises her traditional illustrations by scanning them in high resolution as raster files, before touching them up using a Wacom Cintiq tablet and Affinity Photo. For work that requires digital input, she may use the Procreate app on iPad Pro.

As for animated GIFs, the illustrator creates frame-by-frame animations digitally, using different apps and software, and may on occasion introduce analogue elements to the clip.

Illustration Niches & Themes

Food & Travel Illustration

Food illustration, travel illustration, illustrated maps, illustrated kitchen tools and utensils, and drawings of food ingredients

Lifestyle & Fashion Illustration

Drawings depicting cultural fashion and traditional costumes and ethnic wear, illustrated handmade jewellery, and traditional furniture and home décor illustrations

Cultural Heritage Illustration

Illustrated native music instruments, drawings of handmade and antique pottery and ceramics, local handcrafts, and traditional footwear

Architectural Illustration

Illustrated places, locations and historical landmarks

People Illustration

Illustrations that depict multicultural women and men cooking, travelling, gardening, reading and conversing

Nature Illustration

Illustrated botanical and flora and fauna themes, such as plants, flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruits, and birds

Hand Lettering

hand-drawn lettering with flourishes and motifs that reflect the cultural topic at hand

Illustrated pesto GIF - Ruba Saqr Art & Illustration | Illustrated GIF of Italian olive oil dispenser, animated GIF depicting an Italian olive oil can and cruet with spout pourer | Oliera tradizionale Napoletana | Line illustration, line and wash, ink and watercolour

Illustrated GIFs

Frame-by-frame animated illustrations created mainly in Procreate

Other Illustration Categories

Editorial illustration, illustrations for packaging, and line art