We are pleased to welcome back illustrator Heba Rena Yassin to our Artists’ Alley!

Heba was born in Sutton, UK and grew up in sunny Limassol, Cyprus. She has been participating in the Cyprus Comic Con Artists Alley ever since the first one, in 2014! She studied BA Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire and later graduated with an MA in Digital Art and Design at the University of Nicosia, where she further developed her passion for digital art. Subsequently, Heba moved back to London to start her life and career.

She loves cats, ball jointed dolls, Japanese food and bubble tea! Her work is very much influenced by Japanese art and culture. She has always been interested in Character Design, Narrative and Illustration. She enjoys creating her own comics, character designs and illustrations based on her own or other people’s stories. Heba’s aim is to convey important and powerful messages through her work, relevant to the world we live in. She says that the most rewarding thing for her is managing to convey emotions to the viewer. She truly believes that ‘‘Progress is the consequence of internal conflict’’. The harder we work the more we progress, and the better our work becomes. For Heba, art is a very rewarding and enjoyable field of work, despite the difficulties and competition faced.

Visit Heba’s page on DeviantArt for more images of her work.

Currently she is very much interested in Japanese fashion. In her spare time, she likes to make her own jewelry inspired by J-fashion and has launched a little online shop, ‘FairyCakez’, where she sell her creations. She recently worked as a volunteer at London Craft Week 2017, which was an invaluable experience for her, as she got to see work by different creators and help out at the event as well. In 2015, Heba worked as a character designer and comic page creator for Tag2 Team Studios, while in 2016, she created a short comic entitled ‘SAM’, pubished by WriteCY, a creative writing joint, in collaboration with a writer, for ‘The Comic Book Project’. She has worked as an artist assistant to artist Christopher Christou during her studies in 2013. Her duties included canvas repair, mould making and casting.

Furthermore, she also participated at Malta Comic Con 2015, and Limassol Art Festival 2015. She has self-published a comic entitled ‘KOKORO’ inspired by Japanese anime and manga in 2016 and wrote an article for Bibliophilia magazine, ‘Mapping of Galleries in Limassol’ in 2014. She feels honoured and blessed to be part of Cyprus Comic Con and hopes to continue to be a part of it in the future as well.