I have been taking a visual storytelling and illustration class with Tara Larsen Chang at Cloud 9 Art School for the past few months. We are going to have a pop-up show with the students’ final work at Tsuga Fine Art in Bothell, WA. Meet and greet the artists on Saturday, June 29th, 4pm - 7pm. It’s been a fascinating process and everyone’s pieces are so different. There should be many examples of each student’s process and journey from beginning idea to the completed artwork. Come and enjoy!

The images above show some of the design process for me. I decided I wanted an illustration of a cat relaxing in the sun in a pot. Cats in pots are called nekonabe in Japanese. I lived in Japan for three years and I wanted to include various Japanese themes in my illustration. My cat will be in the sunlight between the shadows of a window frame. I auditioned a variety of shadows on my piece. I decided there would be tatami for the floor and that meant researching it, testing out how to draw that texture and also finding a tatami mat ribbon trim. I wanted some cat toys in the picture for my indolent cat and thought of a large kicker fish toy. Since I lived in Japan, I know they have lots of fish on flags for Boy’s Day, so I came up with a pattern for a fish toy. Then where should the toys go? I cut out some paper shapes and played with their positioning until I found a placement I liked. I made a sample fish toy so I could get the right shadow shape. The final picture is starting the painting process.