Six Questions with Max Temescu

Max Temescu is an illustrator and designer originally from Philadelphia who has lived all over the east coast of the United States. He loves drawing stories centered on the outdoors, climate justice, careful observation, research, and animals. He has also worked as a book and greeting card designer. Max currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2023, Max illustrated the No. 1 NYT-Bestselling Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars, and in 2025 he illustrated The Deadliest series for young readers. He's very excited for folks to read and see his work in Unfathomable: 20 Wild (But True) Stories of the Ocean (Bright Matter, 2026) because it is a stand-out example of the type of engaging, well-formed non-fiction he loves most! Visit Max's website to learn more about him and his work.

1. When you’re not writing/illustrating, what are your favorite things to do?

I love reading and spending time outside enjoying the natural world. A lot of the work I do making books and comics connected to plants, animals, and climate, comes from my love of those spaces and subjects apart from work. Like I love reading comics and spending time in nature with animals, so as I have had greater control over what I write and draw about, I have gravitated toward drawing comics about nature and animals. A nice thing about getting outdoors is it is easy to share those experiences with my wife or my friends as well. Amidst a climate crisis, I think connecting those personal experiences of nature to the history and science of our relationship with nature is pretty organic.

In terms of hobbies, I play electric bass and try to watch a lot of movies as well. Playing bass especially is the most relaxing activity for me.

2. What advice would you give to aspiring illustrators who want to break into the world of picture books or middle-grade books?

The two most important things I can think of are: first, find the subjects that you are especially passionate about and make work about those subjects. If you are already super invested in some period of history or some scientific field, you will probably bring exceptional knowledge and energy to your work about that.

Second, look around at what  is getting published today. This is something I’ve had to do more and more of as my career has progressed. You’re not trying to copy what’s out there. But the better your understanding of the field, the more you should be able to map your strengths onto it. You’re great at drawing ancient architecture or something, and you notice that there are more and more books about the history of STEM topics, but nothing that addresses your particular expertise. Seems like a good thing to build a pitch or some portfolio pieces around. This doesn’t have to be done preciously, but draw stuff and see what connects!

3. What is your favorite part of illustrating books, and what keeps you motivated throughout the project?

I probably like the sketching phase most. I can get bogged down in trying to do the other parts of the process super meticulously; so while I like those parts they often don’t feel as free.

Sketching is this great combo of looking and learning and trying to figure out creative and communicative problems all at once. It really occupies my whole mind, and as you make decisions about what serves the image and the story best, it's really exciting to see the idea of image take form.

That excitement I think is what motivates me. Once the sketch is down, even when its difficult, I want to make that image from the sketch into something finished the best I can.

4. What inspired the artistic style you chose for Unfathomable?

The ocean! The folks at Bright Matter got in touch with examples of my previous work they liked. So, I knew they wanted something kind of bright and punchy, and I noticed they had examples of some of my flowier atmospheric work.

So, I went back to an approach I hadn’t used in a while, drawing with black colored pencil lines, and ink washes for some shading. With the ocean subject matter though, I wanted to really emphasize the watery ink washes. So rather than doing one clean complete drawing with all that and then coloring it digitally, I first made a line drawing and scanned it. Then I would do really heavy ink washes directly over that drawing, scan it again, and separate out the lines so I had a digital layer of heavy ink washes. Then, when coloring I could use those water textures to add textures and shading to the colored line drawing.

5. What kind of research did you do to accurately depict the settings, characters/animals, or time period?

It has gotten harder to find good reliable references online. But I think basic research principles apply to visual research. I generally look to reliable sources like academic journals, museum websites, and journalism first. Then any site like inaturalist or even wikipedia that have some community review practices, as long as I can verify the visual info they give with another source. Oftentimes I’ll pull as much image reference as I can from search results and databases, and then if I notice any information in an image that contradicts info in another, I will read into it further to see if I have a mistaken understanding of some form on an animal or something. For stories like the blubber blunder, or the ROVs in Unfathomable, it is pretty fun to watch the actual footage of the event and see what specific details I can pull from the video sources.

6. This was a big book project. What was your process for creating illustrations for each chapter that are different yet work together?

I think drawing comics helps a lot with this. In comics you are always looking for story-driven reasons to add visual variety to the narrative. It helps with controlling pacing and making moments within the narrative distinct from each other.

So, knowing the drawings will be united by the same color palette and image-making approach, I look at all the thumbnail sketches for the whole book together in order. Then I see which images I think have to have a certain type of composition or look. Based around those decisions I then see if there are ways to build toward those images or contrast them. Maybe I know this one moment has to be framed far away from the subject; are there fun opportunities to make the next image super close up? Maybe that is too jarring, or doesn’t fit the image well. Ok, so what other elements can we play with like lighting or perspective to make the image follow its predecessor and anticipate subsequent images in an interesting way.