Animal Art | Megan Coyle: Artist & Illustrator

March 8, 2023June 8, 2024

Capybara

The other day I decided to work on a capybara collage, inspired by a trending song that’s been going around online. I never realized how tricky it is to make a capybara portrait. At times, it felt like this collage just looked like a blob, so I had to make an effort to focus on the texture of the capybara’s fur as well as the shadows and highlights on it’s face and body. At first the water consisted of a number of fragments of photographs of water from magazines, but they didn’t look very cohesive, so I ended up collaging the texture of water from only a couple of similar images. Overall, this was a fun yet challenging animal portrait, and quite a bit different than the types of animals I’ve collaged in the past.

February 2, 2022June 8, 2024

The Distinguished Penguin

The name for this collage was inspired by one of my viewers during one of the live sessions I had while piecing together this penguin the other day. The viewer said that the penguin looked like a distinguished gentleman, and I couldn’t help but laugh – thus I had to include the word “distinguished” in the title.

I’ve only completed a few penguin collages over the years, and it has been a while since the last time I completed one, so I was long overdue with making another one. Lately I’ve been on a kick with making these animal portraits. A few of my followers mentioned the other day that they didn’t realize that I did other compositions besides animal pieces, and that’s making me realize that I should probably tackle people portraits once more. They may take longer to complete, but it would be good to get back into it again.

January 18, 2022June 8, 2024

Later Alligator

It’s a new year, and I’ve decided to do my best to maintain more of a balance in my life. This time last year, I had already completed several new works of art, and then felt somewhat burnt out the rest of the year. So this year, I’m going to aim to complete about one new work of art every month so I can ensure that I’m pacing myself. And this is the collage I tackled for this month.

I’ve only ever created one other alligator collage, and it was a commission that was completed years ago. It’s fun to see how my style has changed over the years, while certain elements have remained the same. The challenge with this new alligator collage, was working on the scaly texture, as well as the teeth since this piece was one of my smaller sizes. Overall, I was pleased with the finished product and enjoyed tackling a new challenge.

December 26, 2021June 9, 2024

The Colorful Conure

I had a lot of fun working on this commission the other day – it was my first time working on a custom bird pet portrait. Generally I get requests for dog portraits, and every once in a while, a cat portrait, but I hadn’t worked on a pet conure portrait before. The client supplied several reference photos and let me know which photo should be the main reference. This portrait was made as a Christmas gift for the daughter of my client, who actually studied my art in school.

The detailing for this piece was pretty intricate since I had to cut some extremely small pieces of paper. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed working on incorporating a lot of fragments of texture as well as solid color into this piece. I live streamed most of my process, and it was fun chatting with my followers as I worked on the details.

December 23, 2021June 9, 2024

The Happy Panda

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on a panda portrait, so I decided to tackle this collage while running my live streaming sessions. With this particular piece, I wanted to play around with using warm and cool colors for the shadows. I think generally I would have approached this collage by using different shades of gray for the shadowing, so it was fun to change things up a bit with this one.

Since this piece is only 5″x7″, it was especially challenging when it came to working on the detailing of the panda’s face. The eyes, nose, and mouth, all required cutting out very tiny magazine cutouts. Overall, this collage was a bit of a challenge to work on, most likely because the sketch was a little rough and thus I didn’t plan out the overall composition very well. However, eventually I got to a place where I could call the collage finished. It’s nice to work on a composition where it is a bit of a struggle, since it helps me appreciate it more when a collage flows together easily.

November 28, 2021June 9, 2024

Eye of the Tiger

It’s been a while since I’ve made something new – life has been pretty busy these days. A couple of months ago I moved to Manhattan, and moving can be a bit hectic. Aside from that, I’ve been getting organized with my life and exploring other ways to be creative. I’ve been making these collages for years, and although I enjoy the visual art process, sometimes it’s helpful to take breaks from my art so I can revisit the medium again later with a renewed appreciation for it.

So after a couple months away from art-making, I decided to get back into the groove of things by working on this tiger portrait. I had a lot of fun working on this, and I just about live streamed the entire process. Lately that’s been my go-to when I comes to making art. It’s fun chatting to viewers as I’m working on a work in progress.

February 1, 2021June 9, 2024

The Serious Flamingo

I decided to take a break from still life and anatomy pieces and worked on completing this flamingo piece the other night. This was another collage I worked on while live streaming my process. I’m having a lot of fun answering viewer questions while I work. I also previously made three other flamingo collages, and since all of them have sold, I figured I might as well tackle this subject once again.

I focused more on using solid colors for this one, while mixing in a few fragments of texture. Sometimes I feel a need to incorporate more patterns and textures into my pieces, but for this one, I was more interested in mixing solid colors of pink.

January 31, 2021June 9, 2024

Dolphin

This was another composition suggested by one of my followers during a live session on TikTok. I’ve never done a dolphin collage, so I enjoyed tackling this for the first time. I struggled with this one for a bit, and I don’t think I’m entirely convinced that this is finished, but for now it is. Sometimes you need to set your work aside and tell yourself it’s finished, so you don’t overwork it. We’ll see if I revisit this one again in the future…

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.