Amazing Vibrant Worlds Blending Miyazaki Vibes With Traditional Gouache Painting

Jean Mallard is a French illustrator and painter born in Paris in 1997. He studied at the prestigious École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where he learned comics, animation, screen printing, and engraving.

He is represented by La Slow Agency and frequently exhibits his original paintings at the Slow Galerie in Paris. His work has garnered international recognition, winning the Grand Award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2018.

Mallard’s preferred mediums are watercolor and gouache, which he uses to create lush, highly detailed, and poetic dreamscapes. His signature technique involves applying watercolors almost like oil glazes—layering colors from light to dark in a slow, meticulous process to achieve incredibly vivid colors and smooth gradients. Heavily influenced by Moebius comics, Hayao Miyazaki’s films, popular Russian painters, Indian miniatures, and Henri Rousseau, his paintings often depict vibrant, welcoming worlds filled with nature, quaint architecture, and whimsical travel themes inspired by his time living in Naples and Sicily.

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