Artist Statement + Bio: Cierrah Kelly

 Artist Statement:

Cierrah Kelly, known as Ceci, is an illustrator who is known for her  traditional drawings of character designs, concept work, and storyboarding. Her character designs are quite stylized due to her basic understanding of human anatomy. Her characters are always based in high fantasy and the stories of the characters bends between high surrealism and have allegorical based plot due to the climate around her. 

 Ceci can work with a large range of art mediums, but she always prefers ink work. What inspired her to enjoy inkwork comes from various comic book and manga artists. She always takes inspiration from medieval print by the way she cross-hatch style of shading the characters and sceneries.  No matter what medium Ceci focuses on, it always goes back to inking. She finds herself in her inkwork and didn’t acknowledge her love for it until now. Inkwork makes her characters and ideas pop out more due to her being able to dramatize farcical expressions and the character’s anatomy due to her knowledge of inking and her creative way of thinking in order to make her characters pop out more due to her style of inking.

When it comes to creating, Ceci would Frankenstein poses, scenery, and outfits together to get want she wants. In some extreme cases she would go onto photoshop to mismatch photos together in order to get want she wants. She would draw multiple  thumbnails in order to achieve what she wants. It maybe time consuming but her dedication for her passion makes her work hard to have more than achieved done for deadlines. When it’s time to do the final drawing, Ceci would lightly ease what she has to the point she can barely see and began to ink on top of her work. Moving the ink pen away from in a single motion, often times not barely lifting the pen off the paper. For shading she would use a weaker ink pen and put in on it’s side and lightly shade with it. 

Ceci has quite high standards for herself and her work because she knows she can reach her full potential. No matter how many takes it would take, Ceci would make sure the work she does is up to her standards for her future clients, studios she dreams to work for, and for herself. She has a deep love for her passion ever since she was a young girl, she had come to terms as a young child that the art world for women are quite hostile and wants to make change. Especially when it comes to depiction of femininity in different forms of media. 

Bio:

Hello my name is Cierrah Kelly, but many call me Ceci. I am 23 years old and am currently living in Bayonne, New Jersey. Currently I’m working on getting my BFA from NJCU, and I aspire to learn more by going to graduate school. I dream about getting an MFA in animation due to one of my biggest dreams is becoming an animator. I have worked with a large range of art mediums from charcoal to digital, but I mostly work with ink, I always had the love for ink and most of my work contains ink work. My inspiration has always came from comic book and manga artists, I always enjoyed the ink work that comes from comic book and manga artists.