Behind the Scenes: Artist at Work!

Hi readers,

chickaDEE is so happy to have had the chance to work with the super-talented Elisa Gutiarrez for the Arts and Crafts issue. She created Letter Lunch, the wordless story about two kids trying to feed their imagination by finding alphabet letters around their neighbourhood and beyond.

I thought it would be neat to show you how Elisa creates her art. Her art style is called mixed media because she uses different techniques to create one great piece of art.

Check out her cool process below!

First, Elisa draws pictures onto white paper, then traces them onto thick, coloured paper to make the backgrounds and the characters.

Then Elisa cuts everything out of the paper.

She sticks masking tape on the back of the cut-outs so she can move them around and see what looks best.

Elisa tapes down the backgrounds first, then the characters. Then she adds stickers, and uses stamps to make some of the designs. She also uses coloured pencils to add more designs and colour.

When she is happy with how it looks, she gets the image digitally scanned. Then she uploads it into a computer program called Photoshop and uses that to lay everything out on the page!

I think the story turned out amazing. Did you get a chance to check it out? Let me know what you thought of the story or Elisa’s art in the comment section below!

Have a great weekend,

Mandy

Editor of chickaDEE

chickadeeblog@owlkids.com