Kelley drawing horses

Last year I went to the Massive Black conference in San Francisco. At the conference, my idol, Jason Chan, said that recently he had been commissioned to draw three different book covers: a girl riding a unicorn, a girl riding a pegasus, and a girl riding a pegasus unicorn. So I thought that I should probably learn how to draw horses.

As a child I remember reading that horses are one of the most difficult things to draw, particularly their legs. Actually I've found that their weird pointy heads and black eyes are the hardest things for me to draw. But it's been a surprisingly fun experience to draw all of these horses. There's so many great action poses of them out there on the web.

Stephen Silver: Never work for free

Stephen Silver, well-known character designer, gives a five-minute rant on why artists should never, ever work for free.

I'd write more but you should just watch the video.

Fat Rabbit

Just something fun from my sketchbook.

Desktop wallpaper version:

Birthday Card for Mom

My Mom's birthday is today. I made this tri-fold card for her, featuring her four rabbits.

On the left, Sam (a mini lop) and Poppy (a Netherland Dwarf/Rex mix, I think). On the right is Flopper (a Flemish Giant) and Minnie (a Rex).

As soon as I decided to make my Mom a card for her birthday, this is the idea that popped into my head. I decided to make this a tri-fold card, using a process I learned in my Decorative Illustration class last year. I drew a few thumbnails and cut them out of paper to see how they would look when folded.

Then I scanned it into Photoshop and painted on top of it. I printed out a small prototype to make sure that everything was lining up correctly.

Everything looked good, so I took it to OfficeMax and they printed it out on double-sided 11x17" cardstock. The sales assistant asked me why I didn't write "hoppy birthday" instead of "happy birthday."

*crickets chirping*

Then I cut the card out using an exacto knife.

Happy birthday, Mom! Oh, excuse me, I mean hoppy birthday.

*crickets chirping*

Fritz Thaulow

If you ever want to see beautiful paintings of rivers, Google "Fritz Thaulow." When I look at his paintings, I feel like I'm right by the edge of the creek. I can practically hear the water gurgling.

Self-portrait in the morning

This morning, while everyone else was still asleep, I decided to draw a self-portrait. I didn't bother putting on makeup or even brushing my hair - this was going to be pure Kelley. I dragged a chair into the bathroom and drew myself in the mirror for about an hour, I think. I totally lost track of time.

So this is me at 26 years old. It would be an interesting exercise to do one of these every year.

Talisman

A professor asked me to do a painting demo at school, so he could learn about my techniques. So I thought, "gee, I'd better do something good" so I defaulted to a reliable subject: pretty girl in front of a flat background. And also a bird, because it seems like birds are becoming my specialty lately.

I started with this stock photo from Deviantart, and made a pencil sketch from it. I went with a horizontal format because I wanted to try drawing something that looked like a MTG card.

 I usually try to bring my own creativity to a photo reference rather than copying it faithfully, so I tried to think up some sort of back story for this girl. My idea is that she uses this figure of a bird to summon it from skeleton bones. She's kind of a social outcast because she's always hanging out with these half-zombie-like creatures.

I tried to get several different textures in this illustration, so there's fur, feathers, silk, stone, pearls and of course lots of hair. It was a lot of fun to draw, and I like the idea of doing more with this character.

The Sea, the sea

(Unfortunately I've forgotten the source of this photo!)

I really love interior design. Although the styling of this room is a little too stuffy for my taste, I love, love, love the gigantic seascape on the wall. It's very calming. Right now, being an apartment dweller, I try to avoid buying large things such as a picture frame as wide as a couch. But someday a print like this will be mine. Oh yes, it will be.

Husband eating a sandwich

Every day my husband makes the same sandwich for lunch. He takes great care when assembling this sandwich. It contains, among other things, peppered salami, pepperoncinis, and Trader Joe's habanero sauce. When we lack any of the ingredients for this sandwich, my husband is sad.

Trust me when I say that this doodle looks exactly like him.

Michelle Armas abstract art

"Antonia" 13x13.5 print

Michelle Armas is an abstract artist who sells prints and paintings in her online shop. I found her work through some interior design blogs, and there's something really appealing about her fresh color palette and swirly shapes. I would love to hang some of these in my apartment.

"Laura"

"Elka Three"

"Hallow"

Comfy Dog

One of my goals during winter break was to draw some black and white spot illustrations to submit to the SCBWI bulletin. They pay a whopping $25 per drawing, but mostly I just want to see my work in print. I receive the bulletin every month and read it cover-to-cover. The illustrations are, pretty strictly, the following subjects:

1. Children
2. Animals
3. Books

So this is what I came up with:

Boom. Not only did I draw a dog, I drew a golden retriever, who is pretty much the Mister Rogers of pets. I'll take that $25 now, thanks.

This is just the pencil sketch, of course. But I'm unsure how far to take this. I felt like doing some nice, clean digital linework.

Should I stop there, self? I dunno, self. Let's add some values!

I can do more!

So, my normal style would be to totally render this thing and add a few textures on top. But, I mean, come on, it's $25. Then again, I'd like to submit art that is representative of my usual style. On the other hand, maybe I could develop this as a second style - something simple and quick for editorials, textbooks, greeting cards and so forth. It's kind of a nice break from the rendering, honestly.

Decisions!

Some figure drawing sketches

Recently I discovered a handy website which is like a figure drawing class from home.  I like it so much I've been telling everyone about it. It shows you a slideshow of various stock photos of people or animals. I've been setting the slideshow for 1 minute intervals.  These were done with a ballpoint pen.

It's been fun to just pick up the sketchpad and draw for ten minutes here and there. I'm going to need a new sketchbook soon. 

The Wild Swans - touchdown

For my thesis, one of the stories I am illustrating is Hans Christian Andersen's The Wild Swans. This has always been one of my favorite fairy tales, but few people know about it because Disney has never done their own version. And to most people, Disney is the beginning and end of all fairy tales.

Anyway, in this story, a princess's eleven brothers are put under an spell where during the day, they're swans. At night, they turn back into humans. The princess's brothers want to take her across the sea to their kingdom, so they weave a basket for her to ride in while they carry her over the sea. But the sun begins to set and there is no land in sight. At the last minute they find a tiny rock to land on before the swans turn back into princes.

Here are a few of the thumbnails I did for this illustration. But the one that my feedback group chose was this one:

So I started adding some color digitally, and began to add shading and details.

But something was off about the princess's pose. So I threw on a "costume," placed a dining room chair on our coffee table and asked my ever-patient husband to take a photo.

I'M A BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS!!!!!

Using this reference photo greatly improved the drawing. I don't know why I keep thinking I'll be fine without reference photos. They make everything so much easier.

I used a rain brush from amorphisss' deviantart page, and it made creating the rain effect super easy and fast.

I'm really happy with how this turned out. All semester long, my professor has been pushing me for "more drama!!!" and I think I finally achieved that here.

How to combat artist insecurity

One of my favorite artists, Noelle, on how to combat artist insecurity:

"I always just thought I would be okay because I was going to MAKE it be okay and I was going to keep working hard until it was okay. And yeah, there was a lot of luck in there too. But you take every opportunity, you enter contests and galleries and submit art online and email your favorite artists and put your stuff everywhere and you’ll fail a lot but you’re opening up a lot more possibilities to get lucky, too.

Because the thing is, it’s not even always the very best artists who are the most successful ones. It’s the ones who are just a little bit self-delusional and put their art everywhere and who are scared but don’t let it show and they DO STUFF and work hard and when people put you down you just say whatever, I’m hot shit."

-Noelle

Chris for President

I am working on drawing some pencil vignettes and spot illustrations for my portfolio. I've had an idea for this drawing for a while. It's my little brother Chris, dressed up in his George Washington Halloween costume. That year we went trick-or-treating together, and I was dressed up as Jack Sparrow. Since we were both wearing tri-corner hats, people assumed that we were both pirates. Sorry Chris.

An Illustration Christmas

This year I received several different illustration books. My sister-in-law Amy and I share a mutual love of vintage fairy tale books, and she bought me these beautiful (and heavy) collections of fairy tales illustrated by my idols, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac.

I am especially looking forward to reading the Grimm's Fairy Tales, because they're just so weird. Some of Rackham's work is pretty weird too, so it should be an interesting experience.

My Mom and Dad, who bought me the 2013 Children's Book Writer's and Illustrator's Market. I am looking forward to gleaning much wisdom from it, and using the publisher lists to send out a new postcard mailing. Yay postcard mailings! Just a minute, I'm hyperventilating with joy...calm down, Kelley. Calm down.

My parents also surprised me with Dracopedia: A Guide to Drawing Dragons of the World. I love the presentation of this book, and the illustrations are beautiful too. My husband pronounced it "very cool." Hopefully you'll see some awesome dragons on this blog soon.

It was a pretty sweet Christmas haul, I must say.