Farah Aria is an artist, illustrator and author specializing multicultural and whimsical words and images for children. She celebrates multicultural diversity in her rich colorful paintings of children from many cultures. Farah also loves to use fun pastel colors and play with texture in gouache and acrylic paints to create a happy palette for kids.

Farah is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and also studied Early Childhood Development at Cal State LA. Farah spent 15 years teaching preschool, ran her own children’s art studio for 3 years, and has been freelancing for almost 20 years.

Farah grew up in Pasadena, California, and now lives in a beautiful seaside village on the Central Coast of California. She has a grown son who is the joy of her life! Keeping her company now that her nest is empty are her son’s childhood buddies, two birds and two labradoodles - Birdy, Pip, Kirby and Finley all who insist on joining her and “assisting” in the studio!

Farah spent 15 years doing commissioned freelance illustration for the children’s market mostly using a combination of traditional and digital mediums, or purely digital for efficiency while raising a young child, using a Wacom tablet and pen, a computer, and the Adobe Photoshop program. Her editorial illustration has been published in many magazines for women and children. She has illustrated seven educational picture books and also illustrated and authored an educational picture book. Her art has been used for posters, greeting cards, apparel, and animations etc…

After sabbatical from creating Farah is now opening up her studio again to continue writing, illustrating, and editing her manuscript / books dummies for children’s picture books and working on a YA novel while exploring in mixed media and enjoying the artistic community around her.

You can find her in her studio or by the shore with paint on her fingers and sand on her toes!

You can see a little bit of an artist’s life @faraharia on Instagram

Updates on the studio @farahariastudio on Instagram

“A Memory of Elephants Project” follow along with my progress! @amemoryofelephant