I’ve always been interested in art. From the time I could pick up a crayon I would draw every chance I had.
I’m currently working on a book by author Jennifer Poulter for Word Wings Publishing, it’s a children’s full color chapter book so quite the project.
My favorite project at the moment is a book I’m illustrating. It’s a wonderful story about a pony that wants to grow up to be a racehorse. The storyline has a fantastic morel to it, but I can’t give out any more details about it. It’s the perfect project for me as I love horses, trained them for many years & rode every minute I could. I would also draw horses obsessively, & send them to a horse magazine and several were published which was exciting for my 9 yr. old self. I love children also and its great fun to draw characters aimed at them.
I have a rare illness that causes a lot of pain, so it takes a bit for me to get moving in morning. I generally don’t sleep much so I don’t get up until 9-10 am. I like to go to the gym, then come home & start work. I’ll break in the late afternoon to walk my dog or eat something, then work a bit longer on my PC. At night I enjoy sketching & doing studies to sharpen my skills & try new things. I’ll do a heap of sketches I can then work up into full illustrations at a later date.
Painter is the perfect partner; it allows me to channel my traditional background in art on a digital platform.
I’m crazy about the combination of brushes & papers in Painter. I can get really organic looking brush work, especially with papers set to rotate because it breaks up the patterns on paper, so it doesn’t appear digital.
Time is the biggie for me. You need to spread yourself between actually working & the business side of things like marketing, social media and answering questions through these platforms plus my critique group & YouTube channel.
Practice as much as possible, there’s always something new to learn & areas you can improve. That’s why I try to do studies at night or join in classes with artists I admire.
Constant marketing & getting your work seen is important. Attend shows and enter contests plus have a solid portfolio that’s relevant to jobs your trying to attract.
I have an Alienware computer with 2 x 1.5 TB SSD’s, 32 GB RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics card, running Windows 10 & a Wacom Cintiq 24 HD Touch.
I use an iPad Pro with Procreate for sketching, studies & working out comps. I’ll then move onto my computer to work in Painter. The only time I leave Painter is to jump into Photoshop for the warp tool & liquify if I need to make elements wrap or have to tweak anatomy etc.
Learn more about Michelle Webb: www.lionart.studio
