ARTIST BIO
Hi, Lauren here! Since you're here I'm assuming you'd like to know a bit more about me before making a decision either way, hm? I'm happy to oblige, within reason - this is the internet, after all! Bear with me, I can be a bit long-winded at times.
Artist personal background
Where did you grow up? Where are you now?
I was born and raised in western PA for the first 16 years of my life. In 2004 my family moved to southern Wisconsin. I’m still happily in the area today, Wisconsin’s culture is much better for me than PA’s was.
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How long have you been making art?
I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil. I was always drawing when I was growing up. It was rare for me not to have something to draw on. By the time I hit middle school I became known as one of the main artists in my graduating class. I had refined my art by then to be a cartoony combination of anthropomorphic animals and normal animals – I had yet to figure out how to draw people, specifically faces, reliably. Halfway through high school I learned how to draw faces so I started practicing that. Near the beginning of college I got my first graphics tablet and moved to digital art. I’ve been further refining my art since then.
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What’s interesting about your style?
My art style incorporates a lot of anime/manga techniques. I’ve always drawn in a cartoony style, but my art evolved into more of an anime style as I learned how to draw faces without animal features. Even though I’ve adopted the anime influences, my art is still a bit different than the average anime. Some artists use very thin lines, colored lines, or no lines at all. I use black lines that are typically thicker than other anime-styled art. If I need to I’ll shrink the size of the lines but usually I prefer thicker lines.
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Have you received any special awards or recognition for your artwork?
I don’t do art as a full-time career so I don’t have any awards, accolades, or anything of the like. However, I always receive positive feedback on the pieces that I show to people, so I feel like that counts. I did also get feedback on a piece I did for the holidays that asked if I was a professional artist, so that's a huge compliment to me. :)
Why do you make this type of art?
Why are you drawn to this type of art vs other types?
I have always gravitated towards general drawings on paper. I often get the urge to draw and unlike other mediums, like paint or pastel, paper and a pen or pencil can be found everywhere. Any little thing that has a quality similar to paper can be used to create some kind of drawing. I drew on paper placemats in restaurants, even napkins. Nowadays, give me a laptop, tablet, and pen (or a pencil and paper) and I’m happy.
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How do you choose a theme?
I don’t typically choose a theme when I draw just for me. If I get an urge to draw, oftentimes it involves a specific image that pops into my head that I want to put on paper. Other times, I’ll ask family or friends for a subject and pick one that suits the feeling that I get. If I draw something for someone, usually all of that is decided for me so I just lightly shape the idea into something that I can create in my style.
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Does your art represent something about you?
The closest thing I can equate it to is pure freedom. The only limits are my imagination and the methods of fitting an idea into my art style. Otherwise, I can think of something to draw, picture how I want it to look in my head, and then put it on paper/digital canvas. It’s very freeing to know that I can make something that fully came from my imagination and turns out exactly how I want it. Even if the subject isn’t something I think of myself, I love the process of turning it into an art piece.
What inspires you?
What connection do you have to your art?
I’ve never felt a connection to other art types or styles, such as paintings, pastels, still-life, or realistic. In art classes during school they always emphasized still-life and realism, and while I always did well in those classes it just wasn’t me. I get much more joy out of drawing cartoons than I ever did in those other styles.
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What motivates you?
When it comes to drawing, it doesn’t take much to motivate me. It’s always something that I’ve loved to do, so even saying something innocuous like “I wonder what Superman would look like as a gryphon” would spur me into thinking about how it would look as a drawing. (After months and months of this phrase existing here, it's finally a reality: you can find the finished piece under the name "SuperGriffin" on the new Art Store site!)
How do you make the art?
What techniques do you use?
Unlike a lot of other artists, I don’t typically use the shape guideline unless I have a super difficult pose I’m trying to create. Most of the time, at the very beginning I skip the shaping and jump right into making the linework. Since most of the art I make now is digital, it’s easy to correct any lines that don’t look right or simply hide part of a piece that I don’t like. Layers are my friends. I add colors on their own layers so they don’t interfere with the finished linework and sit nicely behind them. Any shading I do involves more layers and adding blending modes to said layers. Depending on the look I’m going for, I can choose blending modes that suit the piece. Check out the images below to see what I mean.
A basic sketch starts a piece off. I usually pick poses and draw sticks to indicate where the joints are, but knowing where the light source and shadows are is helpful too.
Next I lay all the linework down. This is a super quick example but sometimes the lines can be very time consuming.
Next is laying down the flat colors. This little example only has 2 colors but more complex pieces can have dozens of different colors in them.
Shadows are next in my process. Shadows are put down on the opposite side of the light source and follow the shape of the object.
Last I add the highlights. Highlights go on the same side as the light source and follow the shape of the object so that they can reflect the light accurately.
Here's what the layer panel looks like. If you're unaware, layers are used to isolate pieces of a project so that the parts can be moved, hidden, and changed without affecting anything that isn't on the layer being worked. I'm sure there are other uses for them but that's the primary set of reasons for my use of them. The top-to-bottom order affects how the pieces show up. Think of it like a head of lettuce - the outer layer is the only one that's visible and everything else underneath is obscured. That's what the top layers do. Anything that shows immediately underneath another part of the piece is obscured and only the top unobscured pixels will show.
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In this example there are 9 total active layers involved - the bottom 2 layers are hidden so they do not show up in the image. You may notice there are some differences between some of the layers:
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The checkerboard icon on the right of the 3rd and 4th layers from the top means that the pixels are locked. There are multiple ways to lock layers but this particular one means that any pixel that is filled in is locked. This is helpful for changing colors of existing shapes without risking changing the shape entirely. Again, I'm sure there are other ways to use this but this is what I use it for.
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The red vertical lines on layers 3, 5, 6, and 7 mean that these layers are connected to the non-red layer below them. Layers 5, 6, and 7 are linked to layer 8, which is the main base color pink. Layer 3 is linked to layer 4, which is the inside of the mouth color. By putting down a flat color in the exact placement desired, any linked layer above can have the whole canvas filled in if desired but only the area in the flat color layer will show. This method is ideal for secondary coloring and shading.
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The words Normal, Multiply, and Screen are blend modes, which connect to the layer below in a similar way to the red line layers. Normal is the default blend mode. Multiply and Screen are specific modes that either darken or lighten the base color in the layer below, using the color in the blend mode layer as a starting point. I use these primarily in shading unless a specific circumstance would benefit from it.
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What materials do you use?
Typical drawing only requires a piece of paper and a pencil, though I now prefer making art digitally as I find it much more forgiving than a piece of paper. I draw heavily, always have, so any piece of paper will show indents in the paper based on where the lines lay. If I have to erase, the lines may go away but the indentations in the paper still stay. That’s one of the reasons why I enjoy drawing digitally now. All I need for that is my graphics tablet, the corresponding tablet pen, my laptop, and the software I like to use (Clip Studio Paint). Once I have those materials, the possibilities are endless.
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What is the process like?
If I had to estimate it, I’d say about 50% of the process is actually drawing and laying the base colors for the piece. The next 30% is putting down the shadows and highlights so that the art has a 3D look to it. The last 20% is refining everything. I’m very much a perfectionist when it comes to my artwork so if something doesn’t look exactly how I want it, I’ll edit and redo it until it does.
I hope this has given you some insight into who I am as an artist. I look forward to working with you!