I recently
interviewed one of Illinois Central College’s 2014-2015 Students-of-the-Year,
Toni Ritchie. Toni is a graphic design major transferring to Illinois State
University in the fall. She has a huge passion for art and design. She sketched
a little something that will give you a peek at some of the characters inside
my upcoming novel Rabbit in Red.
Her passion is to
create comic book art and game characters. She was first inspired by Japanese
art, and she has a motto that is inspirational and applies to many artists: “There’s
no wrong way to do it.”
Her favorite artist
is Ako Shimaki who does manga in Japan. For you aspiring artists out
there, Toni stresses the importance of determination and practice. Toni got
started by putting paper over various images and simply tracing them. This
strategy lets your hands build muscle-memory as they get used to various shapes
and designs. From there, you try to look at images and draw without tracing.
All of this takes time, but with patience and persistence, everyone gets
better.
Toni is continually
updating her online art portfolio and is working on a fighting scene for
Blizzard Entertainment. With her graphic design degree, she hopes to eventually
work on book covers and movie posters. Below is her favorite drawing, an
Arabian Knight sketch. She created it with graphite and touched it up in Photoshop.
The animal is similar to a horse and an antelope.
She was selected as
student-of-the-year for all of the extra-curricular responsibilities she does
outside of the classroom, including—but certainly not limited to—being the
student president of the Cougar Karate Club and designing a website for her
college biology class.
You can follow Toni
on Twitter!
For Rabbit in Red,
my upcoming horror adventure series, she sketched two sisters who play an
important role in the story. Here you’ll see Jaime and Tara Stein. They’re
sitting on Jaime’s bed, Skyping with best friend and another main character, Bill
Wise. The relationship between these sisters is one of my favorites in the story.
They are raised by their mother. Dad walked out on them years ago. Mom is
addicted to Lifetime Original Movies, while Jaime writes horror stories with
strong, independent females who don’t rely on a guy to save them. The women in
her stories are the heroes, and Jaime is always dragging Tara out of the living
room, away from the TV shows that make it look like a boyfriend is the most
important thing a girl can have. She’s trying to raise Tara to be tough and
independent, like her own characters. Tara has a relatively small role in book
one, but I promise you, the relationship that you see in book one between the
two girls is very important for the series. Tara will have a significantly more
important role to play as the series progresses, but you’ll just have to read
to discover all the magical mystery that is yet to come!
Book one of Rabbit
in Red releases this September. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to stay tuned
for updates! And more art!
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