Hello!

I’m Sarah Gagliardi, a Pennsylvania & Maryland-based illustrator!

I’m a student at Maryland Institute College of Art currently pursuing a BFA in Illustration. My career interests include book illustration, character design, portraiture, fashion illustration & product illustration.

I love fashion history, and I take inspiration from a variety of eras and cultures, usually focusing on the Victorian era. Nature is another big inspiration of mine, and I enjoy researching the vast habitats of marine life. Using these interests to fuel my imagery, I create character-based works that explore diversity in the human form and self-expression, in addition to emphasizing human emotions, memories, and experiences.

I work traditionally, using watercolor and colored pencil. The material qualities of the medium, the translucency of the paint, the layering of colors, and the texture of the paper create a nostalgic and elegant image. My work is often colorful and playful, and always detail oriented. I start my projects with a specific emotion or moment-in-time scene that informs my subject matter and color palette. The human experience is always the central focus in my pieces.