art Archives - Page 55 of 82 - Kelci D Crawford

July 19, 2016

The Ball Will Return: Thoughts on Creative Work

There was a post I wrote on this blog years ago. It’s so old I had written it back when this blog was hosted on Blogger (jeez, remember that?). It was about the concept Neil Gaiman mentioned in a commencement speech in 2012: the concept of throwing your work out to the world like messages in a bottle, and hoping that the bottles wash back to you.

At the time I wrote my blog post, I didn’t mention it, but I had a kind of fatalistic view of the bottles – I thought that when I threw bottles out into the sea, they would never come back. I would post work, work, and more work, and get no return out of it.

It wasn’t until I came across Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert that I revisited this idea of throwing bottles/work out to the world. Continue reading “The Ball Will Return: Thoughts on Creative Work”

July 15, 2016

“How to Make a Minicomic” Workshop Coming to Not-At-Con Day

I just finished this little flyer for a workshop I’m running next weekend – New Dimension Comics in my area is having Not-At-Con Day on July 23rd and I’m running a workshop on how to make your own minicomics. If you can’t make it to this one, no worries – I’m planning on running another workshop in Wheeling, WV sometime after August 4th (dates are still TBA).

I’ve been doing a lot of flyer-type work lately outside of comics. I wonder if it’s a sign…

July 12, 2016

“For My Best Friend,” a Sketch

I drew this over the weekend – it struck me as odd that there weren’t any greeting cards for gay men, especially gay black men. So I wanted to draw something.

This sketch is the start of something. I don’t think I’ll use this illustration specifically for a greeting card, but I’ll make a new illustration based on this one.

July 5, 2016

How I Use Reference Images in Thoughtful Dinosaur

Thoughtful Dinosaur is a comic I’m making for newsletter subscribers and patrons on Patreon (until I can collect all the strips into one book). It’s the story of a young dinosaur fresh out of college and learning how to be an adult.

It draws a lot from my own personal experiences, and as such, I include lots of references from my early post-college days. This includes locations like a downtown park in Sandusky, OH, shots of malls from Arizona, and other locales I have photos of.

However, I don’t directly copy from photographs. That’s not the point of reference photos.

Reference photos (at least, how I use them) are more for nailing down the layout of a location. For example, in the Thoughtful Dinosaur panel above, I used the reference images and my memory to lay out where the trees and the walking path were laid out. The lighting scheme in the comic panel was drawn mostly from memory – I have a vivid memory of one morning walk I had, in which the sun was just emerging from cumulonimbus clouds in such a way that it was gold and warm. I wanted to capture that feeling with the colors in this panel.

Sometimes I’ll use reference photos for colors and lights. I didn’t do that so much with this panel, but sometimes, if I want to illustrate how light refracts off a surface (like, say, sunsets), I’ll use photo references.

I hope this gives you some new ideas for your own creative endeavors. Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

June 25, 2016June 24, 2016

The Air Mage

This little illustration was therapeutic to make for me, because this week has been nothing but hair-fluffing angst (I had a Twitter rant about it, but long-story short: I had to ban a bad player from my Dungeons & Dragons group).

Now, what surprises me is when I share art like this, some folks will say this is made with watercolors. It isn’t. This is Copic markers – my favorite art tool in the history of ever.

Expect a mini-print soon on Storenvy featuring this little pixie of a mage. You can check out the Fire Mage and Water Mage in this post.

Next up…EARTH.

Thanks for viewing!

You. Are. Awesome.