As many of you know, I have been pivoting to focus on illustration in the past six+ months. I spent about seven years consistently making soft sculpture with occasional forays into drawing and painting. This past winter, I had wanted to brush up on my illustration and Adobe suite skills in order to make some Willard & Friends imagery for new merch, but, in the process, became absorbed in drawing and painting all kinds of anthropomorphic animal friends (those illustrations can all be found on products in my Etsy shop!).

Earlier this spring I was primarily making line drawings that I would scan and color digitally but recently I’ve been enjoying doing the whole process on paper, with “analog” materials, so to speak. I want to share more of my process since this is an ongoing learning experience for me. I have dipped in and out of drawing for years but had never given it serious attention or taken the time to go back to basics to learn certain concepts. My goal is to be able to draw these characters more or less from my imagination (both because I like the idea, but also because it’s pretty tricky to find a reference photo that incorporates the animal, pose and garments that I want!) So, some things I’ve been doing include practicing figure drawing especially using vintage illustrations on Pinterest which are for children’s clothing catalogs. This helps me memorize some common ways that fabric falls on moving figures.

I did a process video of a recent illustration of two precious orangutan siblings and you can watch it here!