Northern Ontario is a different way of life. Its remarkable landscapes, opportunities for adventure and Lake Superior surroundings are like no other. Creator and artist of Naturally Illustrated, Konrad Wojcik has made his mark in the new place he calls home in Sault Ste. Marie.
His beautiful artwork captures the essence of what northern Ontario offers and finds so much reward in connecting individuals to nature through his work.
Completing his move north in 2017 from southern Ontario, he has taken Sault Ste. Marie by storm by his inspirational pieces. He does so by using pen and ink to showcase some of northern Ontario's most incredible natural landmarks.
Konrad never envisioned himself as an artist but was always driven by photography, storytelling, and video creations, one big passion project. It wasn’t until he moved that his work shifted to the northern area. His artwork prior focused on nature as a whole, as that is one of his biggest joys.
“When it first started, it was just nature in general, the outdoors. Something that I love and was happy with. It wasn’t until I got up here, and then Lake Superior and I started altering my ideas to suit this general region a little more,” he said.
Pen and ink work spoke to Konrad differently than other artwork materials such as pastels or oil paintings. That art style never really struck with him as much as the new style he quickly found a passion for.
“Pen and ink style spoke to me. It’s a more contemporary style with bold lines, and for whatever reason, I just wanted to keep going and stick with it. The main thing is I found something I actually fell in love with."
Konrad, pursuing his work in this style and before he knew it, created Naturally Illustrated, an Instagram page to display his pieces. This vision of displaying his artwork didn’t arise overnight. He explains it was a process, and initially showed his work under a different account.
“At the time, I had a different Instagram page called Konrad Adventures, where it was pretty much just photography. Back in the winter of 2017, when I first picked up those pens from the art store and just from that one day of drawing, I thought this was cool and posted it on Konrad Adventures for fun to see what would happen.”
After creating a few more original pieces, he received an exciting request, which set the stage for his years to become a creator.
“Basically, after maybe five or six drawings, someone from the middle of nowhere in Washington reached out to me and asked me if I could draw her something, and she’d pay me. This total stranger that I don’t know at all just found me because it was on social media. And that started something. From there, I felt like, oh, this could be it,” he said.
Konrad never saw himself as the type of person to work at a desk job. The typical 9 to 5 lifestyle didn’t excite him as much as being his own boss and supporting himself by his own doing financially.
When his Etsy site launched in September 2017, it was a slow start at first. He didn’t see his first sale until three months after the launch and surprisingly didn’t get his first sale in Sault Ste. Marie until the end of 2018, and shortly after that, Velorution reached out to him to design their jersey, which launched in June 2019.
“Velorution was the start, they were the ones that came out, and it’s pretty crazy because at the end of 2018 was the first time I sold something in the Sault. I lived here for a year, and I had a few sales. All the sales were kind of sporadic around the country. I remember December, my first one in the Sault, which was crazy, and I was like, finally, someone. At the time, no one knew me at all in the Sault,” he said.
From that day moving forward, everything changed for Konrad.
He started getting commission requests from the biking community in the Sault and developed partnerships with local businesses. He created a partnership with the ever-growing running community when approached by the Ultra-Trail Stokely Creek (UTSC) organizer Nick Brash to design the 2020 race logo.
“First and foremost, I am a massive fan of his work. I have been since I first bought my Velorution jersey. I started following him on Instagram and Facebook and was 100 percent enthralled with his style and creativity. I reached out to him to see if he would be interested in designing the logo for our UTSC race t-shirts for the 2020 edition of the event,” Brash said.
Brash strongly believes that Konrad’s work is a statement to be your original self. And by being from southern Ontario, he can connect with Konrad by giving the Algoma region a fresh pair of eyes. When Brash connects Naturally Illustrated and the city of Sault Ste. Marie, he recognizes Konrad’s art as it illuminates the surrounding area by bringing everyone together to appreciate the area in a way like never before.
“For the community, I truly believe he has created an even stronger sense of pride for all of us. Every time he creates an iconic or historical capture through his eyes, it allows us all to appreciate our area in a way we may not have seen before. He puts a lens on Algoma, allowing us to see it as he does. His patented style and painstakingly time-consuming effort on each creation are a testament to good things coming in good time.”
Only picking up the pen and paper roughly five years ago, Konrad has found something that brings him peace and fulfilment. The past five years have been an enormous learning experience for him, and that a bit of patience can go a long way. At the end of 2020, Konrad did something he thought would have taken him a year or two to complete, and that was hitting over 1,000 sales on Etsy.
“I wasn’t expecting to do that, but it did happen. The pandemic offered me more time to focus on it. I put a lot of energy, from the beginning of 2020, I put a lot of energy into wanting to make this a full-time career and passion project of mine,” he said.
His pieces have been delivered across the country, to the United States, such as Texas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. His artwork can be seen all over Canada and has also entered the European market, and has even sent artwork to Australia.
One thing that sets his work apart from other pen and ink styles is his signature orange sun. He inserts the bright flare among every piece of work. At first, he was concerned with adding a pop of colour when traditionally, pen and ink work is black and white. After his father purchased a few colours for him, he took to a piece of paper with a little colour in hand one day.
“My father bought me some pens and some of them were coloured. I was like, why did you buy them? I’m never going to use them. And I didn’t for months and months. But there they were, and one day I took the chance and well, the rest is history,” said Konrad.
Konrad never thought that in the past five years, his career would take off the way it has.
At times when he wanted to quit and admit defeat, he still persevered and never gave up. He has been a dreamer his whole life, and slowly his dreams are coming true by ‘going-with-the-flow' and facing those situations that make you uncomfortable but are the ones you grow from the most.
“Goes to show that sometimes we get into situations we don’t understand or don’t necessarily think are right for us, but over time they may be something potentially life-changing and positive. What is beyond our comfort zones is always uncertain; hence it’s always scary to go there. I find that when we want to go somewhere new or do something that we get all fired up about and then the moment before we are about to try we get fearful or scared, means that we’re heading in the right direction,” he said.