Introduction

I'm new to this blog, so I thought that I should write a formal introduction and tell you all a little bit about myself.  Like Tommy, I have recently been invited to join because I wanted to contribute to the Gilbert Magazine art contest, but I have also been admiring the work on this blog for a while now and am glad of the added motivation to finally join officially!  My name is Kelly and I am a freelance children's book illustrator currently earning an MFA in Illustration.  I graduated from University of Dallas in 2006 with a B.A. in painting.  Unfortunately, illustration was not offered as a major at UD, and so I have since been trying to immerse myself in the world of illustration to catch up on all of the many things I still have yet to learn about the business.

I was heavily influenced by Disney as a child, and a lot of the things that I draw for children still reflect that early obsession.  Consequently, I have two very distinct artistic styles: the realistic fine art that I did in college, and cartoon-like illustration.  My graduate school professors have told me to try and merge my ability to capture realism with my children's art, and so that is something that I am going to be working on this year.

Here are some examples of the kind of paintings I did while in undergrad (portraiture was my favorite):

And here are some samples of my more cute, animated style.  The first two are initial character designs that I did for children's books (one is about chickens and a sneaky fox, and the other was about grasshoppers).  The third is a character that I created in college for a children's literature class that I took through the education department.

Anyways, I just wanted to let you all know that I'm looking forward to participating in this blog.  I can tell from previous posts that the Illustrator's Guild is an extremely talented group of artists, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it! :-)