Julie Johnson, illustrating fashion

After graduating from art school, which included graduate study at Parsons School of Design in New York City, Julie Johnson’s fashion illustration career began in the early 1980’s by doing ads for Bloomingdale’s department store.

Over twenty years later, she was hired to do ads for the store again under completely different creative directors, who still recognized the beauty and skill of her individual, fresh fashion illustration style.

Awards for her work have spanned the decades including those from Communication Arts Illustration Annual in 1984, Society of Illustrators “Best of Fashion Illustration” for three awards in 1993, and again in 2006 for Best of Illustration. She considers her full roster of clients award enough and enjoys drawing fashion more than anything.


“It’s the combination of colors, line and shape with the human form and the personality. Nowhere but in fashion, do you get that explosive combination,” Julie says. “Not only do I love drawing fashion, but I love the people that stand out as personalities in fashion, who exude their own creative, and oftentimes, outrageous style. Dancers, performers and anyone who is comfortable in their own skin are also favorites of mine to draw.”

Her skill at drawing the figure has pulled her into other areas for clients such as book covers for romance novels by Jackie Collins. Her portrait of Anna Wintour for the cover of a book on the fashion editors life was captured in a few quick strokes of brush and ink. Her work has been seen in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, the New York Times, Womens Wear Daily, and on posters, beauty products, and inside books by Oprah Winfrey.

Julie Johnson has lived in both New York City and San Francisco for over twenty years. She is now settled in the Midwest of the United States, enjoying how the internet makes it easy to find clients internationally and working out of an art studio that is converted from an old brick school house in the middle of beautiful farmland.

During the month of April 2010, look for her work to be on billboards and walls throughout New York City’s Union Square subway station. Eighty-eight separate ads will showcase her fashion drawings for Filene’s Basement, a discount retailer in the United States.

For more of Julie Johnson’s work, click on the links below.

www.juliejohnsonart.com
www.lebook.com
http://juliejohnsonart.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/pages/Julie-Johnson-Art