Blog | Megan Coyle: Artist & Illustrator

January 20, 2021June 9, 2024

Dino-Mite

This collage was another request from one of my art followers. This was my first time making a dinosaur collage, and I think it looks a bit rough, which means my next one can only get better. I like sharing a lot of my art, even the pieces I’m not really proud of. I like to share how not every work of art that an artist creates looks completely polished or perfect in their eye. I also like how sometimes some of my work that I’m not terribly excited about is actually work that other people love. You never know, we all have so many different preferences.

January 17, 2021June 5, 2024

Hummingbird in the Woods

One of my art followers suggest I make a hummingbird collage. I made one last year that sold pretty quickly, so I figured I’d make another one this year. For this one, I focused on using fragments of trees from a few images so that the background would have a more uniform look. I enjoyed mixing a little texture for the hummingbird and decided to outline the bird to make it more visible since the background is more complex than what I typically do.

January 15, 2021June 5, 2024

You Took My Heart

This piece is part of a new anatomy series that I’m working on, and lately I’ve been striving to tackle subject matter that I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve never really worked on anatomy pieces before, and I’m really enjoying this whole process. Actually, this entire month I’ve made more art than I’ve made in quite a while, and this piece is one of my favorite pieces that I’ve made in a while. That just goes to show that challenging yourself can lead to pleasant surprises.

January 12, 2021June 5, 2024

Citrus

Still life is a subject that I generally avoid. Previously I’ve felt uninspired by most compositions I’ve come up with, although with this piece, I had a lot of fun with it. I think I need to continue to challenge myself with still life. After all, I just might find another composition that excites me.

January 9, 2021June 8, 2024

You’ve Got Brains

This piece was inspired by some tragedy that my family was faced with in the beginning of last year – my father passed away from glioblastoma (GBM) which is a rare and very aggressive brain cancer. Most patients diagnosed with it don’t live longer than twelve to eighteen months.

I made this to help communicate GBM awareness and I wanted to call attention to this organ that we don’t really spend much time thinking about on a daily basis. It does its job and we go about our lives, occasionally thinking about its existence. And here’s a reminder to take good care of your brain. It’s doing so much for you that you don’t really realize until something goes wrong. So here’s to celebrating our brains!

January 7, 2021June 10, 2024

Orange Conure

This was my first time tackling a conure collage (although I shared the second one I completed first). This was yet another piece I worked on while live streaming, and it was a challenge to juggle working on the piece while answering questions about my work. This took a tad longer than I expected since I kept reworking sections of the conure’s body. I wanted to get a good balance of solid colors and textures.

This piece was also the first of two conure collages that I completed this month.

January 6, 2021June 10, 2024

Conor the Green Conure

I couldn’t help myself with giving this piece an amusing name. This was yet another collage that I made while live streaming my process. This one was a bit easier to put together than the first conure collage that I made, and I enjoyed mixing in quite a few textures. This piece has fragments of pictures of grass as well as green tinted photographs from ads and some other interesting green patterns I pulled from magazine ads.

January 5, 2021June 10, 2024

Bark Wahlberg the Golden Retriever

This was the last collage I completed in 2020. It was also the first collage I’ve ever worked on while live streaming my process. I was nervous about live streaming at first, however, I’ve gotten used to it and actually like it a lot. It’s a wonderful way to work on my artwork and have some company at the same time. Especially these days when we’re all cooped up, it’s a wonderful way to connect with my followers and other artists.

Lately I’ve been live streaming from time to time on TikTok. I’m planning to start live streaming on Instagram as well, but I’ll work on a schedule to make it easier for my followers to know when that will happen. I suppose at the moment I like how I can hop on and live stream on a whim when it comes to TikTok.

December 28, 2020June 10, 2024

The Happy Bernedoodle

This piece was the second one of two commissioned pet portraits of bernedoodles that I completed recently – and this one was of a dog named Ace. This piece was a lot easier to tackle than the other one, but that may have been because I was feeling a little rusty with dog portraits until after I completed the portrait of Addi. Ace’s sketch was also much closer to the composition of the final portrait, which also helped a great deal. I especially enjoyed working on Ace’s portrait since he looks so happy, it’s hard not to smile when you see an upbeat expression like that.

If you’r interested in purchasing my custom art, you can learn more about the commission process here.

December 27, 2020June 10, 2024

The Playful Bernedoodle

This piece was one of two commissioned pet portraits of bernedoodles that I completed recently – and this one was of a dog named Addi. I had a lot of fun tackling this portrait, and a big part of that was how expressive Addi was in all of the reference photos that I was provided. I initially struggled with this collage since my sketch wasn’t well thought out. I didn’t include the octopus toy in the sketch, and Addi’s paws were posed differently. As a result, I ended up having to rework her paws. I also realized that the shape of her head wasn’t sketched out proportionally, so again I had to work on reshaping that section. This portrait was a good reminder that initial sketches are so helpful for planning a piece, and taking more time in the beginning to get the sketch down right, will save you a lot of time later down the line.

If you’r interested in purchasing my custom art, you can learn more about the commission process here.