red | Megan Coyle: Artist & Illustrator

August 14, 2024August 14, 2024

Jessica Day

New Girl has always been one of those shows that I can rewatch and still find myself laughing out loud. The characters are so unique and relatable in their own weird ways, and I knew I wanted to capture that in my art. So, I decided to dive into a new portrait series inspired by the show, and I kicked it off with none other than Jessica Day.

Creating this portrait was a bit of an adventure. I used upcycled magazines to piece together the vibrant, quirky essence of Jess. There’s something really satisfying about taking old materials and giving them new life in a way that captures the spirit of a character I’ve enjoyed watching for years. This portrait took some time, but it didn’t feel like a grind—probably because Jess’s infectious energy kept me going.

While I don’t plan on making as many portraits for this series as I did for my The Office collection, I’m excited to see where this journey takes me. I’ve got a few more New Girl characters in mind, and I’m looking forward to bringing them to life with this technique. Stay tuned—there’s more to come!

August 4, 2020June 10, 2024

Caffeine Fix

It’s been a while since I’ve made a coffee cup collage, so I figured I might as well film the process of making one. I’ve had so much fun making time lapse videos in quarantine, and this piece is number sixteen in the video series. I plan to take a break from making these for a little bit so I can focus on other areas of my art. I’m looking forward to finding new ways to share my art and technique with others.

August 25, 2011June 16, 2024

Red Coffee Cup

I completed this piece a while ago and then I put a stack of magazines on it and forgot about it. While sifting through magazines as I worked on piecing together another collage, I found this one again. It was only made with coated paper, and for some reason the solid colors didn’t look right. So I went ahead and started cutting out bits and pieces of texture from magazines until the collage looked like the image above. Temporarily losing this work of art helped me in the end – I was able to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and make adjustments that made the collage more colorful.

In other news…did you hear? D.C. felt an earthquake yesterday. I thought it was construction and didn’t think twice, but when folks started evacuating from all the buildings on the street, I decided I should follow suit. It was strange feeling the floor beneath me shaking. Reminds me of the earthquake we had last year – which was much smaller than yesterday’s. Last year, I stayed up until five o’clock in the morning working on a project – felt my chair vibrating and saw my computer monitor shaking, thought I must be hallucinating from sleep deprivation and decided to call it a night and go to sleep. Didn’t realize what had happened until I read the news the next day. Craziness.