A Look Inside Julie Benbassat's Sketchbook

Julie Benbassat is a well established illustrator from the United States, working from Providence, Rhode Island as a freelancer. She has been featured by Paste Magazine, been the illustrator for the Brown Political Review and worked with clients like BOOM! Comics, Cartoon Network, Harmonix and The National Park Service. Her work is always filled with life and color. Her variant covers for the Season 11 Adventure Time comics is an absolute joy to look at with her use of more detailed, stylized figures, giving the outlandish fantasy a greater sense of reality that is both eery and child-like, capturing the spirit of the material beautifully. Looking further through Benbassat’s website allows the opportunity for an intimate look into the process her work goes through with her ‘Sketchbook Collection 2017.’ This particular series shows a collection of sketches Benbassat made across multiple sketchbooks in 2017. Here, she gives the viewer a raw look at the births of some her joyously fantastical works. My favorite element of the sketches are the unprocessed, hand colored sketches. Benbassat’s hand with coloring walks this uncanny valley between muted and vivid, deep/saturated colors that evokes some of the classic work of Alan Moore’s collaborators on V For Vendetta and Watchmen. Containing many test sketches for her already known, finished works, shows an artist of great talent going through her process and demonstrating just how much goes into each piece while also providing unique perspectives with which to appreciate the various elements of Benbassat’s artwork and artwork in general.