Kendyll Hillegas

artist & illustrator 

[kendyllhillegas]

With all of us stuck at home, I thought I'd try a fun thing I've seen some other artists doing -- coloring pages! 

These pages are based off of my original illustrations, and they’re free for your personal use — You can print them, color them and post them on social, but please keep the credit in, and tag me too! I want to see what you make with them! If you have an iPad but no printer, you can also just import it into @procreateapp and color it there (share your process video if you do!!).

I'll be releasing a new one every Saturday for the next 4 weeks, so keep an eye out! I’ll share my favorites in my stories on Instagram (@ KendyllHillegas). 

Please no commercial uses like selling, re-purposing or putting in your portfolio.

💕🥖🍞🥯🥐

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Ce n’est Pas du Papier Toilette 

Mixed media on paper

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Things are getting pretty crazy out there. I hope you’re doing what you need to do to take care of yourself and your community. Here is a carrot I drew.🥕💕

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Celery, mixed media on cold pressed paper.

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Still one of my favorites from 2018’s inktober series. Done in 30 minutes with water based ink pens, colored pencil and sharpie paint marker.

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Not totally sure, but I think apples may be my most-frequently drawn food subjects. Only other two contenders would be pie and donuts. Maybe ice cream. Either way they’re definitely the healthiest thing I draw regularly 😂 I love drawing them so much because the colors are amazing ✅ the shadows and form are super fun to render ✅ and I could get lost in the surface texture. They’re deceptively simple, but satisfyingly complex once you get into it. This little guy is from a couple of years ago. Mixed media on paper, as usual.🍏

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More birdie babies. 🐦💕 My mental picture of a hummingbird is that they’re always in flight so I have to remind myself of what this piece is every time I look back on it! I made this as a demo for a class about mixed media (it’s on @Skillshare). Overall I like how it turned out, especially considering how much I constrained myself on the time, but I really wish I hadn’t outlined the red neck feathers. Sometimes you just have to put it out there even if it doesn’t feel perfect!!

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Raspberry for Good Culture’s new line of probiotic smoothies. Painted this guy at a much larger scale (12x12 inches) so that I could pack in tons of detail and texture. (at Venture) https://www.instagram.com/p/B81t3rqjYEM/?igshid=sycwa7vowbwd

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This little apple was done as the demo piece for one of my @Skillshare classes last year. I worked from a photo that I had printed out in order to get the colors as close to reality as possible (the class was about creating realistic color). I remember when I was working on it how often I felt surprised at the difference between what a color looked like to me on first glance, and what it actually was when I compared it to the photo print. That’s the advantage to working from a physical photo as opposed to a screen. I always knew that working from a reference on a screen was tricky when it comes to color, (the lit screen throws off the values and saturation) but because of expediency and because I’m not always aiming for perfect realism, I still tended to use my iPad for displaying my photo references. But lately I’ve had a couple of assignments where perfect, realistic color was needed, so I’ve gone back to using printed photos and it makes such a difference in how quickly I’m able to achieve super realistic color. Now if only someone would make a printed photo where I could pinch to zoom, then I’d be set!😂🙏🏻🤓 (at Venture) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8wuQz7D8Eh/?igshid=1uov8au8ucpr2

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Getting Penny to say “balenentimes day” sure is cute, but we’ve mostly been calling it Love Day since it gets the point across better. So happy Love Day to all of you! I hope your today and your weekend has plenty of beautiful little moments that remind you how much love there is in the world. And thank you for bringing so much love and positivity to this space. Sorry for the cheese. I can’t help it.😭💞

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Another new raspberry cluster. This one pulled from 5-6 different reference images. I wanted it to feel real and organic, but also almost like a bouquet of berries. Pulling from multiple different references can be great because it allows me to create these fantasy compositions that may not exist in real life, but it’s also very challenging because the light and color can be so different from image to image. The ideal scenario would be to take and then cobble together your own references, but that’s not always possible of course. If you’re still working on your own observational drawing skills, I’d recommend continuing to work either from a single reference image, or better yet, from life, until you’ve got a solid grasp on proportions, perspective, etc. . . . #artistsontumblr #illustration #food #realism (at Venture) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8hDlD0jMNZ/?igshid=1x1drzbu9u64m

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Do you say “ay-pricot” or “ah-pricot”? 😉🧡 . . . #illustration #illustration_daily #illustrationinspiration #illustrationow #dailyillustration #illustrationartists #watercolor #watercolor_art #watercolor_daily #art_dailydose #dsart #dailyarts #instaart #apricot #gardening #california #isayaypricot (at Venture) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8eadKhj6gE/?igshid=1dl0igd0qp6zg

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I’ve been focused solely on freelance illustration for just about 6 or 7 years now. Usually when I look back on previous work, I feel shocked at how much time has passed since I made a given piece. It almost always feels like yesterday, even when it’s been 3, 4, 5+ years. But today I was skimming back in my feed seeing if I needed to archive anything and came across my Inktober pieces from 2018, and I was shocked at how not-long-ago I made them. It feels like forever ago, but maybe that’s because so much happened in 2019. Regardless, if you’re new around here and didn’t watch my month-long fruit and veggie inspired inktober challenge, I made this piece and 30 other cross-sectioned fruits and veggies, all with brush pens, all in 30 minutes or less. ✨🧡✨

[kendyllhillegas]

Haven’t worked on a self-initiated piece in so long! Finally finished these up after months of the sketch sitting in my paper drawer. I actually have a whole long list of things both strategic and creative that I’m wanting to challenge myself with, but life has had so many moving pieces lately, so what I really needed to do was just sit down and get lost in a drawing with lots of details. I ended up keeping it more stylized and less realistic because my main goal was to have fun and loosen up. I came up with the composition first (the swoopy shape and the rough number/placement of berries and leaves) then incorporated about 10 different reference images to fit that composition. This was the last thing I painted in my home studio. Haven’t actually done any painting in the new studio yet, but that’ll happen soon! Hope everyone is having a good week so far!💕 . . . #illustration #illustrator #botanicalillustration #botanical #vintagebotanical #gardening #raspberry #wildraspberries #foodillustration #packagingdesign #packagingillustration #watercolor #mixedmedia (at Venture) https://www.instagram.com/p/B737ePnDhs3/?igshid=1iyegqk9cpo0w

[kendyllhillegas]

Happy 2020, friends! Sharing this piece from last year to show that you don’t need to have a beautiful reference image to create a solid illustration. The most important things to have in your reference are clarity (i.e. it’s not grainy and you can see the details), perspective (the angle and viewpoint you want) and proportions. Of course, gorgeous lighting and color are wonderful too, but you can usually get plenty of color information even from a crumby photo if you’re willing to use your imagination and over emphasize what you see in the reference. Also, some of the lighting that works well and looks great in a photo isn’t necessarily all that great for an illustration (that light and bright look is gorgeous, but you need some shadows in your drawings if you want them to look realistic!). Secod image is the photo I used for this piece, complete with dim lighting, too-gray white balance, and baby's high chair tray in the background.

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Hello Tumblr! Something a little different to start off the week. These are some samples that I made to demonstrate a looser, less realistic style. You can use it as a mobile wallpaper if you want! 🎁

On a personal note, I’ve taken the weekends off of social media for the last couple of weeks and it’s been so, so nice! Not sure whether I’ll keep doing that or not, but I’m just feeling like I need regular breaks from constant pressure to put new content out there. It gets to be a lot sometimes, especially when I’m booked up with client work that I can’t actively share. In those times when I’m already super busy, I basically have to make content specifically for sharing on social so that I will look busy, since I can’t share what I am actually busy with. It’s nuts! 🙃🙃🙃

Reminder to myself and everyone else this Monday: we’re only humans, we’re not bots, we’re not corporations, and for most of us, we’re not full-time social media influencers! Let’s be kind and give ourselves breaks and rest when we can!💙🍓🍑💕🌱

[kendyllhillegas]

Guajillo chilis for Milk Street Magazine