In the Studio: Original Art | Megan Coyle: Artist & Illustrator

June 19, 2022August 2, 2022

Ted Mullens

And the sixth portrait in my Schitt’s Creek series is complete. I have two more portraits that I want to complete for this series before I shift to another portrait series, but I may revisit Schitt’s Creek again to make collages of more characters at a future time.

This piece was a bit of a struggle for me. I thought I was getting the hang of portraiture again after being rusty for a while, but I kept struggling with getting the shaping down right. Also, his facial hair changed a few times before I was able to get it in a good place. Sometimes the creative process can take a while…

June 3, 2022September 12, 2022

Stevie Budd

The fifth portrait in my Schitt’s Creek series is now complete. In this picture, Stevie’s shirt looks a little more neutral than the actual piece looks like in real life – it’s actually a little redder. And when I started off with this portrait, my sketch was pretty rough, so I had to work on reshaping a lot of Stevie’s features with magazine cutouts to get things looking the way I wanted them to.

I’m excited to continue this series with about three more portraits. It’s been fun diving back into portraiture and exploring getting the likeness of different figures. It’s been challenging, but it’s also been a lot of fun.

May 28, 2022September 12, 2022

Moira Rose

This Schitt’s Creek portrait series is really demonstrating how the more you practice something, the better you get. I was feeling really rusty when I tackled the first portrait, and now on the fourth one, I’m really happy with the result. It’s still taking me quite a bit of time to complete these, but I’m happier that I’m feeling more confident with getting the likeness of the characters down properly.

I think I’ll make at least two more collages for this series. I may make four more, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Once I’m finished with the Schitt’s Creek portraits, I’m planning to tackle a New Girl series.

May 13, 2022September 12, 2022

Johnny Rose

This is the third collage I’ve completed thus far for my Schitt’s Creek portrait series. I’m beginning to get a little more comfortable with portraiture again, but it will probably take several more portraits before I feel more at home with it. I’m planning to tackle at least three more collages for this series before I turn to a different character series.

Getting back into portraiture after spending years away from it has definitely been a challenge, but I’m liking the routine I’ve gotten into. As an artist, I think it’s important to find different ways to challenge yourself, let that be via unfamiliar mediums or subject matter. I think after I complete several new portraits, I’ll start to revisit still life and landscape pieces.

April 29, 2022September 12, 2022

Alexis Rose

I haven’t been as active with making new art these days, but I am making an effort to make at least one new collage every month. What’s been going on? Well, I’ve picked up a couple of other time-consuming hobbies (like training for half marathons), which has made it a little more difficult to be as productive.

However, I’m currently focusing on a Schitt’s Creek portrait series, and this Alexis Rose portrait is the second one I’ve completed thus far. I haven’t done too many portraits these days, so I’m having fun with tackling a subject matter that’s pretty challenging for me at the moment. Hopefully the more I make these, the easier it will get. I’ve been pretty rusty, but it feels good every time I complete a new one.

March 31, 2022April 6, 2022

David Rose

Life has been hectic lately – I’ve shifted my focus on some of my other interests, so I haven’t been as active with my art-making. I picked up running recently, and have spent a great deal of time training for upcoming races.

However, I’m still planning to at least make one new collage per month this year. I completed this piece just the other night. It’s inspired by the show Schitt’s Creek, and I’m hoping to do more portraits of other characters soon. I started off with a portrait of David since he’s one of my favorite’s on the show. This portrait was definitely a bit of a struggle, and if you were to see it in-person, you’d notice that some sections have been built up with more layers than others. That’s a common occurrence when I’m struggling with a particular subject matter.

The tricky thing about making a portrait of a well known figure, is that it’s very easy to screw up the details and have the portrait not actually look like the person it’s supposed to be. I’m hoping that by picking up portraiture again, this process can only get easier over time.

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

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, 2022January 18, 2022

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, 2021December 26, 2021

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, 2021December 23, 2021

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.