Lily Padula
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lilypadula.bsky.social
Lily Padula
@lilypadula.bsky.social
Illustrator/animator/adjunct professor at SVA

My last name means Shrek in Italian 🧌

lilypadula.com
One day late sharing this lettering commission from @theglobalgoals.bsky.social ! Always love an opportunity to draw a forest.

I’m currently available for new assignments, hit me up if you need a book cover, poster, or for any other lettering projects!
May 5, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Hey Brian! Not sure how realistic you’re looking for but I love to draw carefully observed landscapes in a bright and friendly style- samples attached and full portfolio is at lilypadula.com
April 24, 2025 at 1:37 AM
Another piece from my Character Strength cards, a deck I made in collaboration with HKCocoon!

This piece is called Social Awareness: “I am aware of and understand my feelings and thoughts, as well as the feelings of those around me."

Art direction by Hannah Ma and Cherry Ma
April 11, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Humility, a new illustration from my character strength series! I usually see tigers used as symbols of strength and ferocity, so I wanted to flip that symbolism around for this piece. Many thanks to Cherry and Hannah from HKCocoon for commissioning me for this project!
March 20, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Illustrations that accompanied patient reports of their anxiety, created in collaboration with DScout a few years back! Prompts for each image in alt text, the full series can be viewed here:
January 30, 2025 at 3:07 PM
This piece is from an assignment about wage gaps in the workplace- art director wanted to avoid money imagery and asked me to tackle this dry topic with a more conceptual approach, so I decided to solve the problem with S H A P E
January 29, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Never not thinking about this edo period drawing of hammerhead sharks 🥹
January 28, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Illustration from a few years back, done at the peak of the straw ban craze for @nbcnews.com about how the pollution problem goes way beyond straws. Many thanks to Kara for working with me on this!
January 27, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Illustration I created last fall for a @propublica.org story, about the Yakama Nations fight to secure funding they were promised for a solar project, but is now held up by bureaucracy.

Many thanks to my art director Peter!
January 26, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Gouache painting of the iridescent clouds created by the 98% eclipse over my house, April 8th 2024
January 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
I can’t tell if the egg on my egg carton is friendly or sinister
January 23, 2025 at 5:27 PM
First snow first snow! To celebrate i wanted to share an older illustration I made. It’s about a part of the Mount Everest hike called “rainbow valley”, named after the bright gear that can be spotted on bodies of hikers that fell and cannot be retrieved.
December 5, 2024 at 3:38 PM
Old favorite piece circa 2019 or so, commissioned by NBC news during the straw ban era, about how straws are only the beginning of the plastic pollution problem.
December 4, 2024 at 1:31 PM
First up in my character strength series is Creativity! When I was dreaming up this illustration I’d never seen the northern lights, though it had always been a dream of mine. About a month ago, they showed up in New England in the most dreamy way!
November 14, 2024 at 2:42 PM
Earlier this year I created 24 illustrations based on different character strengths. These were commissioned by CoCoon, an educational non profit based in Hong Kong. I’ll be sharing more about each piece in its own post, but here’s an overview. Many thanks to Cherry and Hannah for a dream assignment
November 13, 2024 at 2:59 PM
Trying to post over here more and what better place to start than with this illustration I worked on with @gristnews.bsky.social ! This piece accompanies a story by @premeemohamed.com about a woman escaping her mobile
home after it’s thrown into a salt crevasse during a storm.
October 17, 2024 at 6:14 PM
Looking at tile to eventually redo my studio floor and it’s taking all the willpower I have not to cover the floor in 300 copies of this lizard
November 29, 2023 at 3:17 PM
My Roman Empire is the fact that my husbands middle school mascot was THIS, and that it took him nearly 10 years to decide this info was important enough to share with me
October 26, 2023 at 1:27 PM
Obligatory intro post- Hello! I make illustrations and short animated films, here’s some of my illustration work!
August 6, 2023 at 1:40 PM