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Angela Matteson is a multi-tasking daydreamer and illustrator; specializing in the children’s market, fueled by dark chocolate, and a love for telling stories through pictures.

Every day brings new inspirations as she discovers the characters that inhabit her sketchbook. Her color-driven works are filled with storytelling imagery that elicits an emotional response. Her characters often come with issues, but doesn’t everyone?

After a 9 year sojourn in a humble suburb of Chicago, where she worked as a greeting card and gift packaging designer, CCAD grad Angela Matteson has serendipitously returned to Columbus, OH, where she is the design & marketing director for a snack foods company.

As a SCBWI member she is also pursuing her dream of creating her own picture books.

Angela loves singing loudly in the car, and stays grounded with long walks in the woods where she finds the quiet stillness that opens her mind to a world where squirrels cry, pigs fly, and anything is possible.

Here is Angela to let you know a little bit about her process:

I begin each project brainstorming ideas, searching through my favorite inspirations, and researching the subject matter. Often my initial ideas end up on post-its just to get the loose concept down before I hit the sketchbook. For one of the paintings for a recent gallery show I used the theme, ‘robots’ from our group blog, and challenged myself to come up with my own unique spin on the topic.

Once I had the basic shapes for a bunny bot character a scene quickly played out in my sketchbook. To adjust sizing, angles, and composition I xerox the drawing, and cut and paste. I then finalize the drawing, and xerox that for transferring onto the wood board.

Before transferring I prep the board by brushing on a thin acrylic wash as a base color. I use a brown colored pencil to strengthen my linework. I then scan the drawing on wood into Photoshop, and create a color study. I love when I already have a color palette in mind. (Sometimes the color idea comes even before the drawing.) But, if not, I go to my ginormous collection of paint swatches and Color-aid, and play around in Photoshop until all the colors are working in harmony.

I keep my color study close at hand, and for this painting I used mostly a dry brush technique, being careful to preserve the wood grain as much as possible.

This painting is 6″ x 6″ on a 1