Monster by Kata

 Hey all! Sorry it's been a while since my last post, life being the way it is. But I wanted to let you all know that I submitted my Monster T-shirt design to Threadless! I would love to see this get printed, so if you are willing, go check it out and give me a good vote!

Monster by Kata

More art to come!
Kata

Character Driven Exercise

Just a quick post with one of my Character Driven  exercises! Here's the "Attractive, Nutty, Angel." I'm sure I'll probably work more on it sometime, but for now I just wanted to get a general drawing down for practice! I'm getting a bit more comfortable with humans, but I'm finding I enjoy the shapes involved in more curvy people than tall skinny type humans. But because this character was short and curvy, the next I'll aim for tall and lanky next time around just to keep myself moving forward. 

I highly suggest everyone stop by Character Driven and throw together a quick sketch to keep both your brain and your hand in practice!

Till next time!

Kata

Illustration Challenges

With the endless things there are to be drawn, I sometimes find it hard to find a starting point to push my illustration boundaries. Maybe it's because for near 20 years I was sitting in a classroom with assignments, but I always seem to be more motivated when I have some sort of challenge before me.

That said I have three groups/pages I want to suggest that I always run to when I need some inspiration and motivation.

The first is the Design-A-Character group on DeviantART. It was started by the wonderfully talented Luigi Lucarelli and features a character design challenge every month, and has a whole gallery of challenges to look through. This page is a great way to get the creative muscles flexing and strengthen/develop those character drawing skills!
 
The second is a variation of the first in that it's another character challenge. Character Driven on Blogger is a great place for a quick challenge. It supplies you with a new challenge daily by providing three describing words and one optional fantasy addition challenge (For example: A hairy, bashful, knight who may or may not be a demon) Unfortunately the Randomizing page seems to be temporarily down, hopefully it will be back up soon.

The last is Critter Jam over on DeviantArt. Every month (or so) a little known, or under-represented REAL animal is chosen for the group project, and it's up to the artist how, and in what medium, they would like to represent that creature. I enjoy this challenge as it pushes me to consider creatures that I may not have even realized exist. This month it's the Satanic Leaf Tailed Gecko, my own interpretation is posted above.

So there you have it. There are plenty more challenges like these out there (I find DeviantArt is a great place to find them, as well as blogger) So feel free to search out the ones that appeal most to you! Have fun and keep drawing!

No Fear.

I have come to the (rather shameful and embarrassing) conclusion that fear plays a large part in my art. That's not good. For some reason, my affected, crazy, creative brain has convinced me that the very next sketch I put to paper will dictate the credibility of my ENTIRE WORTH as an illustrator. Somewhere in my self-conscious mind, I feel that if the sketch I have started isn't looking right, and GOD FORBID someone looks at it, instantly my creative talent as a whole will be held in judgement. Unfortunately this results in ripped up sketches, scribbled out pages, and ultimately a very frustrated, and sometimes discouraged, artist. So I've reached what I believe is a deeply insightful conclusion.
FEAR. IS. BAD.
Who knew right?! Fear has kept me from making the mistakes that I'm supposed to be learning from. How can we climb a ladder when we refuse to step on the first rung? I've heard it mentioned that you have to let the 'bad' ideas free to give them the potential to become, inspire, or simply clear the way for the better to come along.
Now, this is SO much easier said than done. In fact, when I first attempted to create something and not worry if it was 'good' or not, I ended up balling it up and throwing it away while my mind was yelling, "no! Stop! It wasn't that bad!" So I'm forcing myself into a personal challenge, and I urge any other artists (musicians, writers, whatever!) out there to do the same. I'm going to force myself to face my fears by keeping and respecting every sketch I work on, no matter how horrendous I deem it to be. In fact I'm going to post them here even, and force myself to show them off.
Won't lie. . . it's still terrifying. But I'm hoping in forcing myself to accept my fear and face it, will help me to open myself up to 'failure' and in turn, a bigger range of experimentation within my work.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

I Hate Enamel.

I've given it a shot, and I can now honestly say that Enamel has made the top of my "Mediums I hate working with" list. It bubbles for no reason, takes days to fully dry (making what should be a couple hour paint job last over a week) and is a complete pain to try and clean off your hands let alone anything else. Once this current cast is painted and finished I'm retiring the enamel set, and going back to good old reliable acrylics. All I need now is to find a good solid gloss coating that won't hurt the acrylic paints and I'm set. Anyway more fun stuff soon.






. . . fricken enamel.

The New Year

Happy (belated) New year all!

It's been a slow start to the year, work hasn't been picked up yet and I'm looking at brushing up my portfolio and resume. While I wish I could suddenly make millions off of my resin toys and/or illustrations, in the mean time I'll be working to find a more realistic means of bringing income.

I did experiment with enamel paints with one of my poured plastic toys (The plastic was not a good choice, does not pour well and has bubbles all through it. . . however it worked for painting!) The Enamel was interesting, although its about as hard to clean as oil paints and it had a bad habit of wanting to bubble, I think with some time they will be fun to play with. Personally I enjoy the solid colored resin designs (looking to get some dyes soon) but it's nice to have options.

I'm also wanting to sell some original sculpey creations, but it tends to be a bit fragile and I can't for the life of me think of a safe way to ship them. Any suggestions are welcome.

Anyway hope everyone's new year is full of creativity and productivity!

Indulging Your Guilty Pleasure

In the sudden free time I found myself in this past month, I've been pushing myself to try new forms of art, different subjects, different mediums, and overall, trying to grow as an artist. But after some of my experiments went awry and I sat frustrated staring at my bin full of supplies, I decided to reach for my pencil again and turn back to something simple and familiar; my guilty pleasure. And if you haven't guessed, or haven't been privy to my artwork over the years, my guilty pleasure has always been. . . dragons.

I'll admit. . . as I pushed into the 'professional' illustration field, I became more and more embarrassed at my sometimes childish need to venture back into drawing things like dragons and monsters. After all they aren't all that 'high brow' as far as artistic expression goes. But as I dug into my drawing, finding myself lost in and loving the simple act of sketching, I realized just how therapeutic and creatively freeing it is to simply draw something I wanted to draw, for no other reason than that. That's when I realized that as an artist, there are many times when you just have to say screw it, I want to draw something and no one can stop me. Having the confidence in yourself to create something for no ones benefit but your own, I believe, makes you a stronger artist.

So I encourage, heck I challenge all of you artists out there, to indulge yourselves. Draw whatever it is YOU want to draw. Spend some time, just you and your favorite subject and/or medium, and get reacquainted with your guilty pleasure. I think you'll find it ignites some sparks you may have forgotten were there.

And with that, I hope everyone has a happy holiday season :)
Kata