Another submission for the Tomie dePaola Award

Yesterday, I submitted another illustration for the Tomie dePaola Award. This is my third year participating — I blogged about the 2013 contest here, and I was a semi-finalist for my 2014 submission, which you can see here.

The assignment was to "illustrate a moment from the following passage from Philip Pullman’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood” from FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM (Viking, 2012)." (You can read the full prompt at SCBWI.org)

I chose this passage:
"When Little Red Riding Hood had only been walking a few minutes, a wolf came up to her. She didn’t know what a wicked animal he was, so she wasn’t afraid of him."

Below is my digital collage...

Busy October, gallery shows and more to come!

It has been a very long time since I've updated my blog, and I hope you're still catching my posts on Facebook and Instagram!

The month of October was a very busy and exciting time for me. I had a good deal of illustration work come in, AND I had my first group gallery show since college. In fact, I had TWO gallery shows in October — one opened in Iowa on the 16th and the other opened in NYC on the 24th. 

I'll update more about the illustration jobs soon, as well as details on an upcoming solo show, but here is a shot of the watercolor and collage work that was at the show in Cedar Rapids ("Rabbit," "Meeting the Wolf" and "Crow"). 

As always, your questions and comments are most welcome!

Kendra Shedenhelm_COE_College_Art_Gallery_Show_Watercolor

Shoe design accepted by bucketfeet! (And another coloring page!)

I submitted my hi-top coloring page to bucketfeet.com, and it was accepted to go to the next round for product testing!

Because I'd actually drawn the art onto my shoe outline, I needed to re-create the design into 4:5 print-ready vector art. Below is my final reinterpretation, and I've also uploaded it here as a free, downloadable coloring page (PDF and JPG).

Enjoy, and don't forget to tag me on your colored piece on Instagram!

The cookbook I illustrated now in print

The cookbook I illustrated (written by the magnificent Melissa Machowski of M Delish Boutique) is now in the printing process! Melissa and I had a fantastic time working together, and I'm thrilled about this whole project.

It's our first run of 50, so there could be some hiccups, but we'll be signing all of them, and I'll consider these 50 the "collector's edition." (: 

To order yours, you can visit Melissa's Etsy shop here.

Here's a little preview.... 

Another year of the Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search

On Friday, I submitted my entry for the Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search. This was my third year of creating work for this competition, and it proved to be as challenging and rewarding as ever.

This year, we were given a story about a fictitious young woman who lived in Brooklyn. The brief showed us a picture of her (and her clothing style), where she shopped, where she worked, products she'd buy, products she sold in her shop, the food truck she stopped at, and so on. With this type of person in mind, the assignment was to create a patterned sneaker that she could wear when she bicycled to work. The patterned shoe also needed to incorporate at least one word, hand-written or an actual font.

Although I really liked this approach of getting a visual story about the client, I did find it tricky to create something for a person I couldn't really relate to, while still keeping myself in the art. So I focused on whatever images I was drawn to in the brief.

In her shop, she sold some darker, occult-type of items, so I decided to go with a crow theme. They are one of my favorite birds – strong, smart and ominous, and I knew I would enjoy drawing them.

She also sold some pretty, Parisian-style gifts, which made me envision using a loose, dreamy watercolor style for my pattern.

I drew my shoe template with a sharpie, painted several crows (you can see one of them here), and this is the mockup I submitted, followed by the actual pattern...


You can see my 2014 and 2013 submissions here and here.

Your comments are always welcome!

Birds, doodles, shoes and FREE coloring pages!

For a recent assignment, I drew my own shoe template. Now I can't stop drawing on it with my Artwin marker...

Here are a couple of my doodles. Feel free to download these images here, print them out and color them for yourself. I'd love to see what you come up with, so please find me on Instagram and post for me to see!

Loving my new Copic marker

I thought I'd forever be a Pigma Micron and Sharpie marker person, but I've found a new love: the Copic sketch marker. The brush side moves so smoothly on the paper that it feels like it's leading my sketches, and I've found myself drawing a lot more the past few days...

Sketching in the car, while waiting to pick up the kid at camp

Bird sketch, merely because I saw the Copic marker and I couldn't not pick it up

Floral sketch to warm up for summer school class

Geometric Patterns for summer school 2015

As I wrote in my last post, I'm taking another Make it in Design course with Rachael Taylor this summer. My previous post was about my intermediate track submission, but I also submitted to the advanced track.

The advanced assignment focused on "Past Modern," with keywords like ornate, ornamental, geometric, and laser cut. Although I initially spent my time drawing floral elements (which I've done plenty of in the past), I decided to try some geometric shapes in Illustrator, and I ended up with a whole new group of work that I really enjoyed creating.

Below are several of my new patterns, both ornate/floral and geometric (top left was what I'd submitted for the final online gallery)...

Editorial illustration for Girls' World magazine

My editorial illustrations for Girls' World magazine are now in stores! I am beyond thrilled. I love the story by Sona Charaipotra, the images look great in print, and working with the art director couldn't have been better. It was an excellent first experience in editorial illustration, and I look forward to many, many more.

This was our final month for Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells Bootcamp, and the assignment was to create a 7x10 horizontal illustration for this article: "How To Succeed At Becoming A Digital Nomad" by Tanya Mohn.

I wanted this one to be simple and graphic, and I went with a silhouetted style to show the layers of landscapes that a digital nomad has the freedom to work in...

Kendra_Shedenhelm_MakeArtThatSells_LillaRogers_Bootcamp_Digital Nomad

A tiny picture book about a hermit crab (and collage)

I'll be giving a short presentation about illustration and collage to my son's first grade art class today. I plan to bring random textures and objects, my scissors, a glue stick and improvise a little story with their help. The first graders have been learning about hermit crabs for the past few weeks, and they were also required to create their own stories about them, so I will start by cutting out a main character of a hermit crab. From there, I'm hoping the kids can help me shape the story.

My main goal is to show them the fun (and freedom) of constructing a tale with collage – that with simple shapes they can create a character. And by changing elements slightly (eyes looking up or down, changing the mouth shape, moving the character forward), they can even create action and emotion. 

Just in case my improv presentation is a total flop, I also created a takeaway booklet for the students, so they can see the potential of illustrating in this way. This is the takeaway booklet below. If you'd like to download a free PDF, please feel free to do so here. (Please just link back to me if you reference it, and let me know what you think!)

New floral sketches and drawings

I've been wanting more practice with textile designs lately, so I spent a chunk of time this week turning my recent floral sketches into patterns.

After scanning my ink drawings, I opened them in Illustrator and used the Live Trace function to turn them into vector art. I then brought all the vector elements into InDesign, mixing and matching one drawing with another, to assemble the designs. 

I scanned in pages from West Elm and Crate and Barrel, and I used InDesign's eyedropper tool to create swatches of colors from the images. Then I tested out various background colors for my patterns using these color combos.

Here are some of the final patterns, as mocked up in my Society6 shop:

Crabs, Lace and Mashups

In Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells Bootcamp this month, our mini assignment began with drawing two seemingly unrelated subjects: black & white crustaceans and colorful patterns. After spending a week drawing various crabs and lobsters, as well as creating several floral motifs, we were given our main assignment: to "mashup" the two on a plate.

For many of these assignments, drawing helps me understand the proportions of the subject, but for final art, I tend to want to work in collage. With a photo of a rusty Brooklyn manhole and and a scanned watercolor, I created a chunky crab collage. For my pattern, I went with this lace, which also reminds me of a fishing net and a bubbly shoreline. 

In the end, it's not a very successful mashup for me. I love the crab, but it clashes with this one-color lace, and it's visually confusing. I will be trying a version with texture in the lace, and also one with less texture in the crab.

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome!


My latest MATS poster assignment

Yesterday I completed my April assignment for Lilla Rogers' Make Art That Sells Bootcamp course. We were asked to create a 20x30 poster for her upcoming event, the Global Art Gathering, which is in Brighton on June 12. We were given the MATS color palette to work with, and some required copy, but the rest was pretty open.

The color palette threw me, as I was unable to use textures in a way that I am used to (while maintaining the specified colors). I tried some new techniques in Photoshop to get more texture, but ultimately, I kept it simple and went with this for my submission...