Welcome! Oregon SCBWI is proud to feature one Illustrator member each month. Below you’ll find information about this month's artist and links to their portfolio. We encourage you to take a few minutes to learn about this Oregon Illustrator and to enjoy their artwork. If you would like to be featured, contact Robin at: oregon-ic@scbwi.org
Hello! I'm Julia, I was born in Moscow, in what back then was still the USSR. Growing up, I loved roaming the local woods and dreaming up stories. Today, I do my roaming on Oregon trails with my dog Boltie who is very helpful with story-making process, although he gets a bit impatient when I sit down to sketch. A lot of my artwork starts with those sketches. I am inspired by Oregon and my city of Portland. I also rely on my memories to bring to life the scenes from the past. I am inspired by talent. My characters are often dancers, musicians, artists and athletes. Not an audacious person by nature, I am grateful for words and images that, at the drop of a hat, could send me on a wild adventure or down a memory lane, and when I come back, the dinner would be waiting for me, still warm.
What I've learned on my illustrator journey:
The hardest thing for me is to know who I am as an artist. I tend to fall in love with someone else's style or point of view, and before I know it, I'm traveling, head first, down someone else's rabbit hole. The journey may be fun, but the results are always disappointing. To avoid this problem, I try to work fast. I time myself, say, finish a piece under thirty minutes. This way I keep things loose and intuitive and don't have time to overthink.
Visit our past Featured Illustrators by clicking the member cards below.