The Portfolio of Aimee Hagerty Johnson

written by Houke de Kwant on August 3, 2015

In ‘The Portfolio of…’ I feature one designer a day and give all of you a chance to share your work with the world. A lot of you are looking for ways to share your work, get your name out, reach possible clients, you name it… We’re here to help! Submit your portfolio for a chance to get featured here. Today it’s time to show you a selection of the works of Aimee Hagerty Johnson.

Aimee Hagerty Johnson: A lifelong love of literature, research, and art is the heart of my work as an illustrator. I’m convinced that “a studio is a place of study,” as designer Bruce Mau phrases it, so before I paint, I read, research, and learn. Every illustration project is an excuse to study!

I paint with watercolor, acrylic, and gouache, sometimes adding ink, pastel, or cut paper. It’s actually a very traditional, mixed-media, hands-on way of working.

For inspiration and instruction, I often study medieval portraiture, landscapes by L. S. Lowry, William Morris textile designs, vintage songbooks, Carl and Karin Larsson interiors, Norwegian rosemaling, postwar fashion illustration, Pennsylvania Dutch motifs, Mary Cassatt portraits, folk embroidery, the Scandinavian cookbooks of Beatrice Ojakangas, midcentury typography, and everything I can find by the children’s illustrator Aurelius Battaglia.

I hold a BFA in Illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, as well as degrees in English and teaching.