Pete

4 years ago I really wanted a cat and my husband said that was fine by him (he's great). I went to the Humane Society to look for one and after wandering around holding numerous cats I spied a little calico cat I thought was really cute and went to his cage to pet him. As I did, another anxious, tiny, black cat did his best to escape from the cage he was sharing with the calico. This little black cat, named "Little Man" according to the paper taped to his cage had desperate eyes and only one thing on his mind, to get out of that cage. I played with the little calico for a minute but my heart went out to the desperate "Little Man," and got him out of his cage to hold. Little Man climbed all over my shoulder, he had such a great personality that I liked him right away. When I tried to put him back in his cage, he spread his arms as wide as he could in attempt to not fit back inside. My lunch hour was up and I went back to work but I couldn't get Little Man out of my head. His funny little face and desperation wouldn't leave me, I knew I needed him. So, after work, I drove back to the Humane Society and about a half an hour later, I was driving home with my sweet little cat. My husband quickly fell in love with Little Man too. We followed him around the house that first night trying out names, we felt Little Man was a nickname, not a Name name. My husband eventually tried out Pete, and that felt just right. Our sweet Pete has been our friend and family member for 4 years today and this picture is in honor of him. Thanks to Pete for being so determined the day I met him, for being such an awesome monster and friend.

This picture is of Pete enjoying one of his favorite things, trying to catch the moths and flies that occasionally find their way to the light in our living room.

Fashion

Recently I saw some interesting illustrations of fashion models. I thought about these images over the last few days and came up with my own idea for a fashion type illustration. Here it is. Creating this was fun. I had an idea/image in my head for my illustration but getting it to the final product you see here took some time, some exploring and some trial and error. I like the dark gold of the background. At first I choose hot pink but felt that something more subtle would make the drawing more sophisticated and interesting, less trendy. Also, hot pink seemed to dominate the picture and as pink isn't the subject here, it had to go.

Family Guy, Incredible Hulk

Ben, this is for you. Happy Monday! xo, love, K.

Pulp Pink Cover 2

I am obsessed with this idea, the idea of creating a really cool noir type book cover image. After researching pulp/noir book covers some more, I realized something that I already knew really. The girls are just plain sexier on these book covers that the girl on mine. So, I tried again. I like this one, and I'm hoping no one is offended by my picture here. My mom for one doesn't particularly love pulp book covers. But, it's not like she's naked or anything, right?



Portfolio Image.

Children International

I am donating these framed pieces of artwork to Children International for a fundraiser they are having on September 26th, I am really excited. As part of the event on Sept. 26th they will be having a silent auction and that is where these pictures fit into this fundraiser. Here's to hoping that my pictures sell well and make a big difference in a child's life somewhere in the world. For more information on what Children International does you can CLICK HERE.

Pulp Pink

Another attempt to create something that feels "noir." I started this picture yesterday and was so excited to work on it again today. This is really different from traditional noir/pulp book covers, it's much more grainy and much more, messy I guess is the word. I love to create drawings with lots of drips and bursts and blurred places for projects at work and I think that made it's way into this picture. The best thing about this drawing is that for a long time I've wanted to draw something like I see on covers of old pulp novels. I don't draw or paint like these guys did/do; I think that's why I haven't attempted this before but it was really fun to do and I'm glad I finally gave it a go. I hope that if John D. MacDonald were alive, he'd not mind that I followed his lead in thinking up a title for my pretend book cover.

Blue Noir

I have been doing some research for a 2nd attempt at the drawing I talked about in my last post. In doing so, I found an image that I liked and got an idea from it for this drawing.

There are tons of old noir/men's adventure paperback novels published from say 1960-1985 floating around my house and the cover art is really amazing. Robert McGinnis painted the artwork that graces many of these covers and he is definitely my favorite (CLICK HERE to see some of his artwork). He continues to create artwork in this style for a line of novels being published today through HARD CASE CRIME book publishers. The picture here in no way equals this great artwork but for some reason it reminds me just a little of some of the wonderful artwork on the covers of these novels. If I somehow end up being able to paint half as well as McGinnis, I'll be a happy artist indeed.

Watch Out if You're Behind Me

The other day I was at a stoplight when I noticed a woman in the car behind me. She had a round face, round cheeks, very very smooth porcelain looking skin and a tight ponytail (which really accentuated her smooth, makeup free face). She looked either completely bored or lost in thought. She caught my attention because she reminded me of someone that the "old masters" of past art periods would have loved to use as a subject in their paintings. Especially in art periods such as the Renaissance and Baroque, artists like Jan Vermeer, Raphael, Titan, and Leonardo da Vinci, to name a few, loved to paint people with full, round, smooth faces, at least some of the time. Because I have taken so many art history classes, been so influenced by these artists of the past, people such as this woman behind me at a traffic light really catch my attention, I really want to draw them. Because I thought following her and begging to take her picture for referrence would be weird, I just tried to keep her image in my head and then used my own face as referrence for this picture. I wanted to create a picture with lots of white and smooth places, for the eyes to really be accentuated, to be the focal point. I'm not sure if I succeeded completely here, but it was a fun experiement and a good one too because I am really excited to try again.

Bike Riders

Bike riders are everywhere these days (gas prices being what they are, it's not surprising). This being the case, I've been thinking that it would be fun to draw some bike riders. You'll notice that I drew bike riders with normal outfits, I'm just not a big fan of those fancy skin tight numbers you see so much of, they are a bit on the too much information side for me. I decided to draw these pictures in the continuous line style I used for some Vespa pictures (see them further down this blog) because this style seems to indicate movement and that seems fitting. I like these images, I like the fast, swirly line quality and the simple colors.

Birthday Flowers

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday and I wanted to draw a picture for her to make into a card. I've been messing with gradations and other things in Adobe Illustrator lately and got this idea that it'd be fun to create a flower for her birthday card using that program. This is what I came up with, it's really bright and doesn't mirror a real flower at all but I like it. In a strange way that's not at all accurate, this reminds me of paintings by the artist Matisse. Matisse liked wild colors a lot, maybe he'd like this too. To my mom, you are amazing. Happy Birthday!

Orange and Blue

As we drove home the other night, my husband and I were treated to the most amazing sunset. The sky was ribboned with clouds, between the clouds were two large bands of color, the lower was orange and the upper was blue. The clouds made these two colors look completely separate, like we were really looking at two different skies at the same time. Here is my version of this sunset. The tiny line going through the black mountains is where we were driving; interesting, that makes me think of how small we are compared to the sky, the universe. Makes me think we should throw our worries to the wind and just be pleased, after all, our worries must be small, at least when compared to the immensity of a sunset.

Butterflies

A week or so I was looking for used books with my husband, (something we have been doing with vigor the last few months) when I ran across a book by Robert McCammon called "The Queen of Bedlam." The title on the front cover looked to be made from spilled molten gold. I loved the look of it and thought that I knew how to create something like that. I thought a butterfly that looked like it was made of molten gold would look awesome, so, I gave creating one a try, these are my attempts. The first one, well, I like it but it clearly missed the mark (molten gold wise at least). Over the last couple of days I've mulled over how to create this image the way I want it to look and finally came up with an idea that I thought could be the answer. This morning I gave this project a 2nd attempt with my new ideas in mind and it worked! I am so excited! A molten gold butterfly. If you look closely, you can see a butterfly pattern I created as well for the background. I think it looks neat how this pattern shows through the blue of the main butterfly wings.

Mason Jar and Marbles

I've been creating things that look 3D at work lately (helmets, visors and little contraptions), and it's been a fun experiment; one that has happily gone fairly well so far. I wanted to draw something that looked 3D for this blog and came up with the idea that a marble in a mason jar would look really cool. Here it is. I think it turned out fairly fun. It really looks like a glass mason jar so, hurray, I guess it's a success. I also like the intense colors of the marbles.




Portfolio Image.