illustration Archives - The Fable Key

April 23, 2016

The Jungle Book Movie Poster – Ft. Shere Khan

After seeing the latest rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’ film, I was blown away by the animation and the film as a whole! So much nostalgia, I used to watch this film on repeat as a kid. I was particularly captured by Shere Khan, the ‘baddie’ Bengal tiger who happened to be king of the jungle, voiced by Idris Elba. *spoiler alert* He sadly met his demise as a result of the red flower ( a reference to fire, used by the characters in the film) in a dramatic scene. I was feeling inspired by this scene and really wanted to illustrate it in some way.

You can see the results below of Shere Khan looking rather menacing, with his battered and bruised features illuminated on one side of his face. I thought the fire in the background with the forest silhouette was also pretty effective and finished the piece rather nicely. Digitally painted on my Wacom Cintiq over the course of a week.

If you haven’t seen the film already, I highly recommend you go see it for a dose of nostalgia!

January 24, 2016

The Revenant Poster

I went to go and see The Revenant at the weekend, a film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu featuring the fabulous Leonardo DiCaprio & Tom Hardy. Such a beautiful piece of cinematography, loved every minute of it! I really do hope that Leo gets an Oscar for his performance in this film, he deserves it after all! It also amazes me how he can still look good, even after being mauled by a bear and covered in horse carcass…but anyway;

A frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team.

I especially enjoyed the grizzly bear scene, as I watched it, it instantly gave me an idea for this illustration, which I just had to get out of my system. Also a great opportunity to get more practice in and test out my Wacom Cintiq. I don’t tend to draw/paint humans, so it was a nice little challenge for me this weekend, I’m pleased with the end result of this digital painting and I hope you enjoy it as well! I added a bit of background and typography to the piece to make it in to an alternative film poster.

If you have not seen The Revenant already, I suggest you go and see it, it’s fantastic and I highly recommend it!

December 16, 2015

WWF Poster Campaign

WWF – It’s time to save the world

I have decided to illustrate a series of posters featuring endangered wildlife & landscapes all for a good cause. 100% of the funds made from the prints will go directly towards the WWF ( World Wide Fund For Nature) to help with the conservation and preservation of our beautiful endangered species and to tackle climate change.
The WWF is a fantastic charity that tackle global issues and the money that I will raise for them helps towards safeguarding wildlife, changing the way we live for a healthier, more sustainable planet, protecting forests and other habitats, preventing illegal hunting of our threatened species and much more.

To put things in to perspective, here are some shocking facts & statistics;

WWF Image Endangered Species

Globally, forests are lost at a rate of 36 football fields per minute.

By 2050 about 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, nearly as many people as are alive today.
In the next 40 years, we have to produce as much food as we have in the past 8,000.
Almost a quarter of all mammal species and a third of amphibians are threatened with extinction

We need to change our ways and act fast to accommodate our growing population in a sustainable way and live in harmony with the animals that live on this planet – it’s their home too.

This is why I am doing something to help, and you can help too as soon as I have these posters up and running! I will be making various sized prints around £10 each with world wide shipping. My goal is to raise £1000, but I want to raise as much as possible! Even if you don’t buy one, it would be a great help if you could like and share the links to the posters to help spread the word! :)

I aim to have these finished by early next year, but here’s a screenshot of what I’m working on for the first one! I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with the colours and composition, after creating my Star Wars The Force Awakens poster, I have the poster bug!

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, I’ll keep you updated with more progress soon!

WWF Tiger illustration Poster

December 3, 2015

Star Wars The Force Awakens Poster Contest

I recently heard about Poster Spy’s Star Wars The Force Awakens Poster Contest, With only a few days left till the submission date I quickly rustled up this poster design! Panic is good fuel for good art. I don’t often work in full vector colour, but I really enjoyed it and I already want do design another one like this – maybe I will make it my new year’s resolution to create a movie poster per month!
The brief was very loose and any aspect could be applied to the design. I took my inspiration from watching the official Star Wars The Force Awakens trailer on youtube and I took screenshots of particular moments where I thought the image could work within the poster.

I found the image of Kylo Ren looking out of the ship window very inspiring, it was a striking image and I knew instantly how I was going to set up the composition of the poster. The elements going on in the background, including the fabulous Millennium Falcon worked great within the window frame and looked as if you’re ‘looking’ through the window from Kylo’s point of view.
I hope you like it!

November 26, 2015

Skull Wallpaper Series

Being evermore fascinated by animal skulls, I’ve been experimenting with them and I’m in the process of creating a series of alternative home skull wallpaper. I’m digitally painting the skulls from scratch with a watercolour effect. So far I’ve created a horse skull & wolf skull pattern. The organic shapes work perfectly with the spirograph type shapes I’m including them with. Each spirograph is inspired by the natural shape of the animal skull. I love how it looks like a floral pattern, but when you inspect closer – BOOM, skulls everywhere. I’m excited to finish the whole series, I think it’s going to be a good one! Once I have completed them, I’m going to pitch the project idea to a few home decor companies.

November 15, 2015

Corey Taylor Drawing

Here’s a recent sketch I did of Slipknot’s frontman Corey Taylor! A bit different to my usual cutesy animal drawings for sure! This was drawn using pastel pencils and also Prismacolor hard coloured pencils. Check out some of my original sketches for sale via my Etsy Store!

If you’re interested in commissioning me to do a particular piece of art, do get in touch.

October 26, 2015

Blasphemy & Kittens!

Had the pleasure of working with the amazing PUNK PAWS – a new alternative clothing company for animal lovers. They commissioned me to come up with something involving a demon cuddling a cat, so I came up with this Tarot card inspired piece, based on ‘The Devil’. I made the demon creature look ‘kind’ and compassionate towards his fellow feline friends! I think it works great in this bold black and white style. I also LOVE the fact that Punk Paws donate 10% of their sales to a cat protection charity, too! I hope to work with them again on some more designs like this in the future!

You can support PUNK PAWS & buy the ‘Blasphemy & Kittens’ T-shirt HERE.

“Not only do we want to supply the world with some awesome clothing but we would also like to use the brand to have a positive effect on the animal world, and will therefore be donating 10% of our profits from each sale to the Cats Protection charity.”

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October 21, 2015

King Leo – Lion Drawing

I have recently completed ‘King Leo’! This original lion drawing is now beautifully framed and for sale via my Etsy store, he needs to go pride of place in a new home!

I’m really getting back in to sketching recently and have been experimenting with a lot of new mediums – I haven’t used pastel colours since I was in art class as a child, but I’ve recently purchased some pastel pencils and I am in love with them! I love the way they blend and can also get a lot of detail in at the same time. I have also discovered ‘Prismacolor‘ coloured pencils, which I find great to work with, too! Greater for fine detail.

If there’s anything you’d like to see me draw next, feel free to send me a suggestion here! :)

Thank you for looking!

– Krysten

September 10, 2015

‘Mindfulness’

I have recently worked with the creative manager at Sanctuary Personnel to create some imagery for a social care magazine (Sanctuary Social Care) article to illustrate ‘mindfulness’. The sentences below from the article are illustrated by the images created. I thought that double exposure would work really well with this, mixed in with sketchy elements to illustrate the stress/anxiety associated. I had fun creating them and I think they turned out pretty well! I really enjoy doing something different once in a while. I can’t wait to see them in the published article :)

“Keeping all those balls in the air and worrying about not dropping any”

“We need to pause and empty our minds”

“stop the constant chatter in our heads”

September 3, 2015

Fenrir – The Rise

I have previously worked with Ipswich based rock quintet Fenrir, to create the artwork for their new and exciting first part of their EP ‘The Rise’, which is due for release 21st September 2015. The brief requested the album artwork to be colourful, full of life and to incorporate ‘mother nature’ in to it. I used ornate, floral imagery mixed in with wildlife and landscape to create this digital piece, using William Morris as my inspiration and starting point.

“Its been 2 years since our last record and although we’ve released 2 separate singles since then we think this EP really shows a distinct progression.” explains guitarist Mike Cockayne. “More than anything it’s more refined than our older songs and it really shows what we’re all about.”

You can view details of their new September tour & book tickets to go and see them here, don’t miss out!

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