Kirsten enjoys being out in nature and listening to the birds sing. She loves books, especially old ones and loves reading. As Kirsten is fascinated with how imaginary characters come to life, her favorite moves are animation and fantasy.
As a child Kirsten loved coloring books and was careful to keep everything ‘in the lines’. As she got older she doodles and colored ‘Doodle Art’ posters. In 1977 she started drawing, but after high school she put it down and left it behind her. Kirsten began drawing again in 2001 in order to illustrate her first book ‘The Hinterland Faeries in the Quest for the Flower and the Pearl’. That project took several years as it involved coloring 44 pictures with Prismacolors and Kirsten was also working full time.
Kirsten draws cartoons for children and adults who are children at heart. She loves drawing faeries, but also does child characters and likes to play with fantasy scenery. Her outlines are a darker color than the filled in area of the design and she likes to add lots of detail. Kirsten didn’t realize or pay attention until last year when she realized that Disney art is drawn in a similar manner. She has always loved Disney and thinks that has had some influence on her art.
Inspiration for Kirsten comes from things she sees in life, social issues or just ideas that pop into her head and insist on being expressed!
Kirsten is a self taught artist. In 2006, after an auto accident, she really began to focus more on her artwork. It was a diversion from the pain she was in. She says she is happiest with her nose stuck in her computer drawing a faery and bringing her to life. Kirsten’s style has changed some over the years as she has grown as an artist. She collects items from nature such as leaves, sticks, rocks and flowers, and scans them into her computer. Then she manipulates the resulting images in Photoshop to create fantasy realms for her faeries to live in, or wedding invitations and other designs. Her characters are drawn on paper with pencil first. These drawings are then scanned to create digital images, which Kirsten colors digitally using her Wacom tablet and pen in Photoshop. She is now teaching herself Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 and animation with ‘Toon Toom Animate’. This artist and author now has two published picture storybooks available for purchase and is working on several more.
In July 2010, Kirsten became a member of ‘The IndiExibit’ and participated in the ESPY Awards Gift Lounge. It has been such an exciting adventure that she chose to send her art to more gift lounges this year. 2011 gift lounges she has participated in so far include the Golden Globes, the Sundance Film Festival and the Kids Choice Awards. The next lounge is in June 2011 at the MTV Movie Awards. In addition to participating in these events, Kirsten is also an administrative assistant for this group.
Recently, Kirsten has licensed her designs to several companies. Borealis Art Dolls is bringing Kirsten’s faeries to life through charming cloth dolls. They are all hand sewn with lots of love. Kats Magical Patches is creating fabric patches and iron transfers of Kirsten’s characters. Crafting stamps of Kirsten’s faeries and characters will be available from Queen Kats Stamps. Kirsten is also working on animating one of her books with the Toon Boom animation software.
Other new projects in the work are some exciting new characters and stories. These include a black swan faery parody, an Arthurian Rocker chick, and a Karma and Dharma duo.
Currently Kirsten’s art work is available online on t-shirts, stickers, mugs, aprons, prints, postage stamps, greeting cards, post cards, skateboards, Ked Shoes, necklaces and many other fun products through Print on Demand sites. Once Kirsten figures out eBay, she plans to offers jewellery featuring her faeries and ACEO cards.
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All Images Copyright Kirsten Edwards, All Rights Reserved
Edited by Ruth J Jamieson, Copyright Ruth J Jamieson, All Rights Reserved
Thank you so much! I appreciate it! Have a fantabulous day!
ReplyDeleteWoa, this is sooo cool!! WTG Kirsten!
ReplyDeletehugz,
Cherie