Krista Real Art Portfolio

Krista Real art portfolio

About

Krista Real is an artist living and working in El Paso, Texas. Her work revolves around layers of pattern, botanical illustration, and ﬁgurative imagery.

Growing up in a series of small Texas towns impressed upon her the dichotomy of female strength required for surviving a challenging landscape juxtaposed with the traditional diminutive role impressed upon women in this area of the world.

Narrative and descriptive at times, her work attempts to reveal the complexity of women within the two-dimensional frame using folklore, handmade dolls, and other metaphors as avenues to explore the borders between what it means to be simultaneously strong and independent and extremely vulnerable.

Table of Contents Surface Pattern Design…………………..............6 Digital Scrapbook Papers……………………....11 Selected Artworks………………….........................................16 Selection of Graphic Design……….………….24 Previous Works……………………………………….....26 Links………………….................................................34

Surface Pattern Design

The following frames are examples from the surface pattern design portfolio under the name of Willow City Stock, a reference to the group of German ranchers who worked the land they inhabited and the artist’s family roots on the ranch her grandfather worked as a member of this community.

Using textures, familiar imagery and country motifs, she combines tropes into wearable and livable patterns to evoke a sense of usability and timelessness with the ever-present delicacy of a predominately tinted color palette in Adobe Illustrator.

Digital Scrapbook Paper

Continuing to work under the name of Willow City Stock, Real has created a series of digital scrapbook papers using layers of media in Adobe Photoshop.

Beginning with printmaking techniques, she combines photographic, hand drawn elements and pieces of ephemera to mesh layers together, forming cohesive backgrounds for mixed media artists to download and use for their own purposes.

Selected Artworks

As previously mentioned, much of the artist’s work is ﬁgurative in nature and questioning of the female role within a conservative society.

Using the folk tale of Rapunzel, handmade dolls and the repeated use of textures and ephemera, Real continues to utilize Adobe Photoshop to create brief, two-dimensional worlds and stories for each of her “characters,” or dolls, some of which are repeated motifs in her surface pattern design work.