I'm Ximena, an illustrator and industrial designer from Montevideo, Uruguay, now based in Berlin.

My illustration work is built by hand — collage, traditional media, layered textures and soft lines assembled into worlds that feel slightly atemporal and magical. The kind of place that doesn't exist on any map but feels immediately familiar. I'm drawn to details borrowed from the past: worn surfaces, faded patterns, objects that carry memory. Characters that feel like they've always been there.

I spent years working across industrial design, graphic design, toy and 3D modelling — in studios and corporate environments where creativity had to be precise, iterative, and delivered on time. That discipline didn't leave when I picked up scissors and paint. It lives in how I read a brief, how I build a character across a whole book, how I think about a spread as a system before I think about it as a picture.

Children's book illustration feels like the perfect combination of art and function — where a single image has to be beautiful, clear, emotionally true, and be able to tell a story. That's a design problem. One I love solving.

If you're working on a project and think we might be a good fit, I'd love to hear from you. → Get in touch