Veerle's blog

Kevin Cornell is our next guest illustrator. He describes himself as follows:

Well... I am 29. I suppose I am an illustrator for a living, however it seems as though I do an awful lot of house-cleaning during work hours. So I may be a butler as well. I live just outside of Philadelphia, in the United States. It's a nice little city, though it's the metropolitan equivalent to a teenager's bedroom — full of cool stuff, if you can find it buried under the rubbish.

Kevin also has a website called "Bearskinrug" were he writes about his work and posts many of his great art.

When you look at Kevin Cornell's work you almost feel its instant spontanity. It feels like drawing and sketching is Kevin's second nature and he's full of fresh ideas. I like the water color style because I have a soft spot for these types of illustrations. His cartoonish, or dare I even say Western style adds a bit of humor. His work makes me smile when I look at it.

How did you become the staff Illustrator for A List Apart?

Thirteen rounds of strenuous hand-to-hand combat, in a round-robin, double-elimination competition, of which only one survived... some guy named Leon. But then Leon picked me from the crowd of spectators to draw illustrations. Or that's what I like to tell people. The real story is not near as exciting.

Actually, Jason Santa Maria was designing the site, and felt it could use a couple illustrations to break up the text. So he contacted me, gave me an idea of what he was looking for, and I drew up some samples in a style pretty similar to what you'd see on there now. So there you are. This is a good lesson for any hopeful illustrators out there: Art Directors control your future.

Is it difficult to come up with illustrations that fit the article?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. You can never really predict what article might easily yield an illustration; and often what makes it hard isn't so much coming up with an illustration, it's coming up with one that steers clear of cliches, or avoids ideas you've already explored in previous illustrations. Then there's the instances where it is easy, and I shoot myself in the foot — instances when I've already brainstormed a good idea, but didn't realize it, and went on brainstorming for another 5 hours. That's time I could have allocated to starting the illustration, screwing it up, and starting over again.

Any insights in your creative process?

Well... I wrote a little something a while back about how I approach each A List Apart illustration; things still run pretty much the same. Though I notice that I'm putting less and less detail into the roughs, which is really because Jason has seen enough of them to know how they'd translate to a final illustration. Now the roughs are more of a shorthand than a tight pencil. In a couple of months, I imagine I'll have regressed to stick figures.

With my other illustration jobs, I generally work a similar way, starting with a rough pencil. But depending on the final product I want to generate, I might approach it from a different direction, or purposely throw a kink in my usual routine to try and get an unexpected result. That's the funny thing about trying to do your best work — creativity isn't just limited to the execution of the art; you need to find creative ways to jump-start yourself, trick yourself into doing something different, or get excited about a common problem.

Do you start sketching on paper or do you work directly on the computer?

Always, always, always on paper. Which is simply because that's where I'm most comfortable. To me, the most natural drawing tool is a pencil, because it's so flexible. It can convey both line AND tone, and you can also erase it. Of course, you could do the same on a computer, if you had a drawing tablet. So if someone felt more at ease with the computer's drawing tools, I'd say it makes sense to start there.

For myself, I think I'd never want to deviate from paper because if I were to suddenly become more comfortable on the computer, I'd need to lug one about with me whenever I want to draw. Plus, if a meteor hits — plunging the world into chaos and causing man to revert to nomadic wanderers — how's anyone going to see my digital art ever again?

What interests you most in an illustration?

Probably the last tiny bits of detail that push an unfinished drawing into the finished realm. You can't put detail everywhere, so you have to pick and choose what gets special treatment in an image. It's kind of like a guessing game. Like charades! Though fun. Not like charades.

I always wondered if a veteran like yourself get things right by the first sketch?

Hardly ever. Though sometimes I'll draw something, and think it's crap, when it actually might not be. Really, it's just that it didn't turn out how I expected. So when I go back later with some fresh eyes, it looks okay. That's actually a pretty helpful lesson; one of the first bits of advice I ever got from a teacher. No matter how things look, finish the drawing. Even if you think it looks bad, there's only two outcomes that can occur, and both of them are positive. You'll either keep drawing, and figure out a way to fix the drawing; or you'll keep drawing and it'll still look bad, but you've learned some lessons on what not to do (as well as had some practice).

More examples at the Bearskinrug website.