IF-Sight

Thea came upon a most unusual sight.  What was behind that door?

My piece for this week's Illustration Friday, this was an idea I had for my portfolio,  inspired a little by The Wizard Of Oz.  I love the idea of moving between black and white and full color worlds.  It was also a chance for me to explore working just with value.  I do like to work in black and white a lot, but I still sometimes find it challenging to make everything read, so this was a good exercise for me.

IF-Kernel

This is an oldie.  I originally did this piece for an illustration class that I took long ago, then reworked a few years later, also long ago.  I hadn't yet taken up acrylics at this point, this was done with ink outlines and watercolor.  The assignment was to illustrate a poem called "Table Manners"...My favorite part are the corn kernels flying through the air from the boy's cob.  The funny thing is that corn on the cob is one of my least favorite foods.  I love popcorn, and cornbread...yum!..., but corn on the cob?  Yuk!

Arrr said the Parrot Pirate

I don't know why, but this image popped into my head and I just had to put it down on paper.  How do you think it would look on a t-shirt?

IF-Heights...Godzilla!

It just crossed my mind that this piece that I did a while back also fits this week's Illustration Friday theme.  I originally did this for Drawergeeks, a web drawing club that I belonged to.  Drawergeeks is unfortunately on hiatus, but it was a big inspiration and motivation for me to start doing my own work again. 

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...