Making of: Beeloved

Finding the right head tilt and positioning

First layer of acrylic

Before the tears and sad brows

Before the hair and the hand comes in

Honey in the making

Black liner around the eyes gets removed for an alternate appearance. It just didn't feel right.

Insect creation was probably the most new to me. I should do wings more often

Hair is completed and she's almost ready to photograph. Purple flowers ended up not
 being needed for the final image, too distracting.

The final piece "Beeloved"

Hey guys,

 it's been a while since I shared some process photos, here is my latest piece. This piece took about 2 weeks to create on and off. I like to step away from my work and see what is working, not working and  change aspects to create a strong piece. One of the changes you may notices in the process photos is that this girl had black liner on her top lids previously, but was altered later on. I think without the liner, her face softened and eyes appeared more swollen from crying. That's the look I was going for. Also she going to have purple flowers along with the foliage in the piece, but when tested, they appeared too distracting and over-the-top. I liked all the focus going towards the message and the golden tears of honey.

This piece was created to raise awareness about the smallest, sweetest, yet most often forgotten species, the bees. The dying species not only affects us, but has a ripple effect on other species (hence her bear ears representing the connection of bears and bees and pollination).

Beeloved highlights the synergetic relationship of bees and beings. It reflects upon the approaching demise of the bee species that is quickly falling out of our grasp.

I'm selling prints of Beeloved on my Etsy Shop and donating a percentage from each print sold to bee conservation. I thought is would completely make sense to do, to help the species through my artwork, which is my voice, but also giving a voice to the bees.


Cheers,
Kira

Published in 3x3 Illustration Annual

After submitting for the past 4 years, my work is finally good enough to land on the pages of 3x3 Illustration Annual. I'm beyond excited about this and hope to get lucky again next year. Over 6,000 submissions and only about 450 get into the book, it's pretty wild. If you pick up your copy, find me on page 122.

Honey Bee.. Be Mine

I'm not going to lie, making this life size bee for a project gave me some ideas to sneak it in a friends dinner... and suddenly I'm into making insects.

 No really though, I have a soft spot for bees and I'm heart broken that they, along with other animals, are on the brink of being extinct and are dying out by the millions. One species can't function without the other. And you guess right.. This new piece has something to do with that concept. Almost complete!

Kira

Soft Lips, Puffy, Rosey Cheeks

Happy New Year friends!
     I have been building up my creative juices so I can make some more magical artwork in the new year, this is a peek of something special I've been busy working on. During the end of the year I was very conflicted with the type of art I needed to be creating to stay on point with what's hot or things that could potentially appeal to clients vs. what I wanted to make personally. I never want to create for the sake of quantity, quality in work is very important to me, since my style is pretty time consuming.

     I've been reading The Artist's Way Every Day which is a wonderful book I would recommend for any artist. You read one page a day and get back into the creative flow. It's so lovely to read small inspirational blurbs each day, overtime your negative thinking, and artist block will go away. 

Applied Arts: Proud FM Artwork

I recently spotted my Proud FM artwork in the new Applied Arts Advertising issue (Sept/Oct). The series was also in this years Photography & Illustration issue which is double the awesomeness. I just wanted to share in case you pop by a book shop, look out for some the great work thats been chosen.

The Making of: The Curious Collection series

 

A portrait study of freak show performers with physical deformities that deform our reality, and human oddities that oddly enough, we cannot help but revel in. This series is inspired by circus posters from the late 19th century, along with Edwardian fashion and classic film portraiture.

Photographed by: Philip Rostron

[ Created: 2013-2014 ]

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THE PROCESS:

 

A behind-the-scenes look into the creation process and the many details that went into creating this year long series. The characters are created from clay, costumes are sewn or painted, sets are built and finally they're photographed. Sometimes people think that my work is digital or created in a format other than sculpture. I wanted to show that it is in not created digitally in any way, just a lot of time consuming hands on sculpture work.

 ~ AMELIA & CORDELIA ~

Symmetry is very important when creating twins, I had a lot of tweaking of facial features so they match very closely.

Curling and styling the hair. Originally Amelia & Cordelia were supposed to have black hair, but I couldn't resist the deep red color that matched their eye colour perfectly. I can only control so much, the characters take over from there.

The most enjoyable part: costume creation. Mixing sculpture, fabrics, painting, and miscellaneous found objects.

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 ~ BEARDED HELENA ~

 

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~ UNCLE EDGAR ~

 

First round of sculpting Uncle Edgar.

 

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~ ANNABELLE WHITE ~

Smooth as a baby's bottom

I got a brand new sewing machine before starting on Annabelle's outfit. A good, functional machine makes all the difference. I was so frustrated using my grandma's machine from the 1970's.

Completed dress and under garnments.

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~ OCTAVIA ~

 

I wasn't planning on giving the second set of eyes eyebrows, but I had to. The expression was getting thrown off without eyebrows.

Sometimes it's easier to shoot the set laying down then figuring out how to hang things up vertically. Lesson learned.

Award Winnings for my Proud FM Advertisements

I'm super thrilled my ads for Proud FM have been pretty popular this year. I worked on this series during last summer, but only recently have they been released. It's really been, what I think, is my best work to date. Thanks to a wonderful team of people I got to work with including, Instil Productions' Philip Rostron, Saatchi & Saatchi's Joel Arbez and Matt Antonello. I can't wait till the next one :).

 

Marketing Awards 2014

Applied Arts Photography + Illustration 2014

This piece won Gold at the Marketing Awards and got into Applied Arts

Bronze winner at the Marketing Awards 2014

New Magical Things

Just a peek of whats to come. It's about 60% finished at this point, a bit more magic making left for this piece to shine.