Serena Malyon Paints the Kind of Fantasy Worlds That Feel Like You Have Found a Lost Page From a Storybook No One Ever Finished

Serena Malyon is a Calgary-based Canadian freelance illustrator known for imaginative fantasy scenes, historical visual influences, and traditionally painted work that pairs watercolour with Acryla gouache. Her imagery often feels like a page from an unknown folktale: richly colored, gently strange, and full of narrative clues.

Malyon describes illustration as the place where her love of reading and painting came together. After graduating from art school in 2012, she built a full-time freelance career by 2017, creating work for book publishers, independent authors, magazines, tabletop games, video games, and collectors. She also supports her practice through prints, original work, process streaming, artist proofs, and playmats.

At the center of her personal work is an original world that began with a map. Malyon developed its lore into a long-running body of thumbnails and paintings, giving her a setting she can revisit between client projects. She has said she hopes to eventually turn that worldbuilding into a book or art book.

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