The "Heights" of Fashion-IF

Here's my entry for this weeks Illustration Friday-"Heights".  I was inspired by a scene from the original  Broadway production of Into The Woods where Cinderella was curling her stepsister's hair.  I was obviously also inspired by Marie Antoinette and her famous over the top wigs.  This isn't really done in the style that I usually work in lately, but I liked the way my pencil sketch was turning out so much that I didn't want to lose its feeling, so I scanned it and colored it in Photoshop, still a fairly new technique for me...

IF-Jazz Baby

I originally started this piece for last week's Illustration Friday, "vocal", but just got around to finishing it today. I thought I would submit it anyway, since this week's subject is "puzzled" and the setting I put the character in sort of looks like a big puzzle! I've always been fascinated by the 1920's, "the jazz age", art deco, etc., so this is a bit of a tribute to all of that.

IF-Vocal "Jazz Singer"

This is a remake of one the first digital illustrations I ever made. At the time I was using microsoft publisher. I was really happy with this piece, but then my computer crashed and I lost the file, so all I had were some fuzzy printouts. I was working in a style then that was influenced by my discovery of Alex Steinweiss and Jim Flora. Love their stuff!

IF-Vocal "Little Brunhilde"

This is an older piece that I'm posting for this week's Illustration Friday topic, "vocal". I did this originally for my husband, Patrick, when was working in the educational outreach department of the LA Opera, though he didn't end up using it. It now belongs to my cousin Jessica who is studying opera at the University of Illinois, and a beautiful voice she has!

IF-Return

This is for this week's Illusration Friday, the subject is "return". Return made me think of when I was in elementary school and how excited my dog Whiskers would be when I returned home. That was always so nice, especially after a hard day at school. Good memories!

Swamp Venus

Boy, its been a while since I did an illustration in Illustrator. It was lots of fun, but I sure feel rusty. This was done for this week's Illustration Friday challenge, "swamp".

KentCulotta.com

I am happy to say that my portfolio website is finally back up and running! The site has been down for a few months, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was, but thanks to the ministrations of my cousin, Chris Rundell, everything is A-OK! Go take a look!

Dan, The Taxi Man

Exciting news, everyone! Just saw the proofs for my first children's book, and it looks great! Here it comes, Dan, The Taxi Man, written by Eric Ode, illustrated by me, and published by Kane Miller. It's official release date is September 1st. I can hardy wait!

Happy Birthday, Emma!

Finally I finished the illustration for my niece, Emma. I've been laid low by a cold for the last couple of weeks, which slowed me down quite a bit. Now I have to get these pieces matted, framed and in the mail. I can't wait to hear what they think.

Happy Birthday, Isabelle!

Here's my latest illustration, done for my niece Isabelle's birthday. A while back I did one for her eldest sister, Cailley, and I knew I would have to get around to doing one for Isabelle and also for her other sister, Emma. Their birthdays are just a couple of weeks apart, and Emma's piece is already in the works. Sshhhh, don't tell them!

Emilie at the window

This illustration is for the back of my next postcard, with the same little girl who's on the sea serpent on the front side. I like working in both color and black and white. I have to say that black and white has a special, magical feeling for me. I love old black and white photos and movies.

Sea Serpent

Well, I'm a little bit late, but here's my next postcard. Emilie and the Sea Serpent. I still have to do a black and white illustration for the back side of the card...

Wedding Bells

A good friend of mine got married recently, so I did this piece as a wedding gift!

Merry Christmas!

I'm almost, almost, almost ready for Chrismas. Finally got my cards out today!

Tintin is coming!

The new Spielberg movie "The Adventure of Tintin" is about to open, something I've been both looking forward to and dreading. It's been mentioned in several places that the Tintin books, while hugely successful in Europe, are little known here in America. That seems funny to me, since both my brother and I have been huge fans since childhood, growing up in the wilds of Michigan. I remember reading black and white reprints which were serialized in, I believe, Children's Digest back in the third grade, and we soon had a collection of most of the books at home. My brother Mark even wrote an essay about how Milou, (Snowy the dog in the English translation), was his favorite cartoon character of all for one of his college applications.

Now the Spielberg movie is coming out. The trailers I've seen are full of action and swooping cameras. They're exciting to watch. I've always enjoyed the old-fashioned kind of popcorn movies that Spielberg is so good at. That's the part that I'm looking forward to. What I'm not looking forward to is all the motion capture weirdness. No matter how well its done, the characters come off as soulless zombies. It's a choice I don't understand. If you're going to do a "live action" movie with these stories, why not just hire actors with a resemblance to the beloved characters and let it go at that? What we have to deal with are "actors" who are eerily not quite human and not quite the charming drawing we grew up with. Neither fish or fowl, as the old phrase goes.

I guess I'm just a purist. I would have loved to see an old-fashioned, well done, traditionally animated movie that really captured the spirit and look of these stories that I have loved. Most of all, I'm sorry that my brother Mark didn't get the chance to see this movie. I would have loved to hear his opinion.

CJ, the lawyer

Here's the final illustration that I did for my cousin, a "portrait" of his son CJ who's currently going to law school. I was trying to get it done in time for Christmas, but I guess I didn't quite make it. Oh well...

Lawyer, Lawyer

Hello everybody, I'm back! I've been awfully busy these last three months doing the final illustrations for my first picture book. I finally finished this week and sent them in to the publisher. I'm happy to report that they really like them! It was quite the learning experience for me.

This sketch is for another project, a commission from my cousin.

Feathertop

Hello everybody! I've been a bit lax about posting on my blog lately because I've been busy working on my first children's book! It's called Dan, the Taxi Man and it will be out sometime next fall. I'm in the midst of doing the final illustrations and I'm having a blast doing it.

I took a little break to do this illustration for my next postcard. This one is inspired by the Nathanial Hawthorne story Feathertop, about a scarecrow who falls in love, a story that I've wanted to illustrate for a while.

Boo-Boo-De-Doo!

And this is for the backside of my latest postcard. It was a nice diversion from the other work I'm doing now. Fun, simple and quick!

IF-Midsummer Night

Well, I've finally gotten back to doing an entry for Illustration Friday, due to a lucky coincidence! I had picked Midsummer Night's Dream as the subject for my next postcard mailer, and was working on the piece when it was announced that Midsummer Night was the next IF subject. I love lucky coincidences, I just wished they happened more often!

This was my first traditionally painted piece after doing a lot of work in photoshop the past couple of months. It was great to work with real paint again, but I guess all mediums have their advantages. There were moments that I really wanted an undo button on this.

Big Princess Hair in Glorious Technicolor

I recently finished a freelance project that forced me to give myself a crash course in Photoshop, (even though I had played with it a little before...) The project was fun but a LOT of work. Now that its done I wanted to try coloring my own piece so I took my sketchbook doodle that I posted previously and here it is...

Big Princess Hair

Just a little quickie from my sketchbook. I didn't want to ignore the blog for too long. I've been busy the last few weeks on a freelance project that I hope to have done by the end of this coming weekend. Wish me luck!

IF-Bicycle

Wow, I've done two Illustration Fridays in a row! Yay me! I did this one quicker and looser than I usually do, so that I could have it in time to submit.

Journey

I've finally gotten around to doing another piece for Illustration Friday. This weeks subject is Journey. This piece is very much inspired by a Saturday Evening Post cover by JC Leyendecker, one of my favorite illustrators.

Back of the Postcard

"I'm a little jazz bird and I'm telling you to be one too!" -Ira Gershwin. This is for the backside of my new postcard.

Spring Planting

Chuck is back! This is an illustration for my next postcard. It's spring planting time for Chuck.

Happy Cailley Day!

I did this piece for my niece Cailley's birthday. She mentioned that she liked jackalopes a while back, and for some reason this idea came to mind. It's only a little over a month late. Not too bad for me...heh heh. Happy Birthday Cailley!

Merry Christmas

This is my 2010 Christmas Card, and also the postcard I'm sending out to publishers. It turned out to be a bit of a "bear" to do! I hope you all like it!

More Chuck!

"Chuck found a job at a restaurant..."

Chuck the Duck

A few years ago my nieces, Cailley, Emma, and Isabelle, wrote a story called Chuck the Duck while we were eating dinner at a restaurant. I've been intending to illustrate it ever since, and I'm finally getting around to it.

"One day there wass a duck named Chuck. He needed money, so he went to find a job."

Snow White and Rose Red

"Rose Red would run and jump about the meadows, seeking flowers and catching butterflies, while Snow White loved to sit and read."

This is a new piece for my children's book illustration portfolio. I spent a lot more time than usual on this illustration and I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I'm planning on doing several more illustrations from the story of Snow White and Rose Red...

Diary-Reading Sister's Secrets

Wow, its hard to believe that I have another blogpost so soon! This is a piece that I started a while ago, but then set aside. It's my first piece that I've done in photoshop. When I started I was doing it with a mouse, but it was slow-going, which is probably why I set it aside. Then my friend Brian loaned me his Wacom tablet. It took me a bit to find my way working with a tablet and with photoshop, but I think I'm starting to find my rhythm...

It Was Night, And The Rain Fell...

This is my entry for the SCBWI Illustrator's Day Contest in LA. The illustration is supposed to be inspired by the line "It was night, and the rain fell, and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was..." Now that I've finished the piece I don't think my idea is very original or interesting.

Every illustration I do is a learning process, and this one is a good example of that. Sometimes I plan my illustrations very carefully, but in this case I really just winged it, drawing it straight on the the illustration board instead of working and reworking the design on tracing paper. I also really didn't have a clear idea of what colors I wanted to use, and so I made it up as I went along. I'm definitely trying to find the right balance between planning carefully and being spontaneous.

Grandmama

Here's a quick piece I did to get back into the swing of things. I was out of commission for a couple of weeks, (pneumonia), and now I'm trying to ease my way back up to speed. I'm questioning myself a lot about my work right now and trying to figure out which way to go.

Illustration Friday: Paisley

Now that Drawergeeks is on hiatus, I've been meaning to start contributing to Illustration Fridays. It took me a while, but here it is. The subject is Paisley. I did this one with very little planning, just a quick blue sketch on my illustration board and out came the paint tubes. It feels a bit like working without a net.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

Well, I finally got my art desk cleaned and organized, and now I hope to get a lot more art work done. This was a piece I started a couple years ago, then set aside and lost track of...

Waitin' round the bend, my Hucklberry friend...

This is a commissioned piece I did for my good friend Jose. This one got interrupted by my month long trip to Massachusetts, but now its done!

"SNAP SNAP"

A quickie piece I did with Illustrator. I usually like to start with a hand drawn sketch, but I just started playing in Illustrator with this one. Easy to start, but much harder to finish...

Anyone Got An Atlas???

This is my first piece done in Illustrator in quite a while. It was fun to get back into it. You may remember the original sketch that this is based on from a couple years back.

sketchbook

This is from my sketchbook, done a couple months ago. Done at Victoria Gardens, where Patrick works. I especially like the "Dad" who is carefully "watching" his three kids.

Sketching Eve

This is a quick sketch of Eve I did based on the famous painting by Lucas Cranach, the elder, (and seen on Desperate Housewives). I was reminded of this piece yesterday when I went to the Norman Simon to see the Comtesse d'Haussonville by Ingres. I've always wanted to play with this subject.

Paul Bunyon Done!

I wasn't sure how I felt about the way this piece turned out, but seeing it on the computer I like it very much. I still feel like I have so much to learn about working with paint, but I guess the answer is to keep trying...

...testing...testing...

Just playing around with some new art supplies. This was done with neutral gray ink, (instead of black). I really like the way this feels to work with. I can be stiffer when I'm working with black ink, with the gray ink I feel looser, more natural. This is going to be fun!

sketches

For this weeks Drawergeeks, Paul Bunyon. I had hoped to get further along, but on the other hand I don't want to rush it, so...here's the sketch.

Mark

My brother Mark asked me to do a Facebook avatar for him a while back. Well, I finally finished it!

Redhead

This is something a little new for me. I've been wanting to loosen up a bit, so I did this without any pencil rough, just starting straight out with a brush and some paint.

Frankie's in Love

Well, this is a week late, but this was for Drawergeeks. I finally got my drawing desk cleaned off and can work again.

Betty and Veronica

At last I've done a new Drawergeeks. I really need to get back into the swing of things with this blog! I did this one pretty quick, Betty and Veronica in their late middle age.

Mom, I've been published!

This is so cool. Walt Stanchfield was the best, most inspiring life drawing teacher I ever had. He had been at Disney forever and was already a legend by the time I met him. He knew how to criticize your work without making you feel like you're a crappy artist and should never pick up a pencil again. His goal was to make your drawings feel alive, like real living characters instead of dead anatomy lessons. It makes sense since he was so full of life and joy himself.

One of the things that Walt did each week was to give us handouts with tips, examples, quotes, etc., to help inspire us. He would often include students' drawings as examples and this is one of mine that made it. Pretty exciting, huh? His handouts have just been collected and published in two volumes called Drawn To Life, and I would highly recommend these books to anyone who wants to learn or improve their drawing skills. These books are a goldmine of information and inspiration!

p.s. My drawings are on page 277 of volume 1!