Kristy originally came on board at Starfish Central in a part-time role, because of her experience with icon design. While she’s certainly very good at that, it’s illustration at much larger sizes where her true interest lies.

Kristy still does freelance work, but we’ve managed to snag her attention for at least four days each week, doing web site designs as well as custom icons and logos.

I asked Kristy to jot down some notes about her illustrations, and she was kind enough to oblige:

I produce a lot of creative illustration pieces either just as single artworks for prints, for storyboards for comics or animation ideas, or just simply for fun. I’m also often involved in producing instructional illustration, that is, illustrations which explain to a viewer how an object works, shows it in a way that the viewer would not normally be able to see (for example, the insides of a machine that are not accessible) or how to carry out a task.

The type of illustration I do does vary greatly, as well as the execution. It ranges from freehand sketching, coloured pencil illustrations, vector artworks in Adobe Illustrator, and digital sketching and painting in Adobe Photoshop.  My favourite is traditional illustration with graphite pencils, Tria markers, and Aquarelles (water colour pencils) or a combination of all three. The process feels a lot more personal, and is especially challenging when there is no undo button, but computer based illustration lets you achieve much more.

It’s become a stepping stone for everything I approach in the creative world, from the rough sketch of a web site layout, to designing a logo, to creating a sculpture. I enjoy it because at the end of the day, it’s just you, a piece of paper (or even a napkin), a pencil and whatever your imagination can produce. You can show people things they’d previously not thought of or viewed in a particular way before, and the reaction is pretty awesome!

Kristy did the logo and web site design for lawyer Richard Timpson, and drew the awesome Brutal Pixie mascot (based on photographs of our copywriter, Leticia Supple). More of her work will be going live soon.

In the meantime, here’s some examples of her amazing illustrative work.