animals | 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.

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.

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.

July 21, 2020June 5, 2024

Hedgehog

When it comes to my animal portraits, I’m mainly drawn to making bird and dog collages. So the other day I decided to work on a hedgehog collage for the first time. I wasn’t sure how this one would turn out, since I figured the spines might be difficult to recreate. I was pleasantly surprised with how I found some texture that worked well with making the hedgehog’s spines. It’s nice to go outside of your comfort zone and try new things.

July 15, 2020June 10, 2024

Golden Retriever

One of the silver linings of quarantine is that it’s forced me to get more productive with my artwork. I can’t believe that this “Golden Retriever” collage is time lapse video #14. Nearly every week since lockdown has been going on, I’ve been striving to complete one of these time lapse videos. And I was pleasantly surprised with how this piece turned out.

July 1, 2020June 10, 2024

Hummingbird

I keep trying to work on a different subject, but I’m consistently drawn back to animals. What can I say? I think animals are more exciting to make time lapse videos of. This was an especially fun collage to make since it was my first attempt at making a hummingbird.