Hi! I’m Julian (he/him). I’m a picture book illustrator & author with a deep love of colors, stories, and creatures. I work in gouache, illustrating warm, colorful flora, fauna, and fungi.
As a kid I spent my time in the forest, running (very literally) barefoot through streams and picking berries off bushes to eat. I still soak up every bit of information about the world around us I can find. That love of the natural world—the textures, the colors, the connections—is the soil nourishing all of my work. I try to tell the real stories that fascinate and highlight creatures and places that might be overlooked.
I work in my basement studio next to my wood-burning stove, usually with two very sleepy cats to keep me company. Everything I paint is intensely studied and researched down to the last tiny hidden detail! When I’m not painting, I’m wandering in the woods closely inspecting mushroom caps and acorns and figuring out the names of all the slugs I see.