Kelly Smith

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Beauty

Black & White

Editorial

Fashion

Food & Drink

People

Photorealistic

Cover illustration for 'Cocktails in Paris' tale

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Illustration of woman in orange outfit holding basket with bread and oranges

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Elegant woman in black skirt and white jacket with cocktail in Paris

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Craft the perfect Parisian-inspired cocktail

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Glamorous mixology guide celebrating Parisian culture and style

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Magic fashion illustration

Fine pencil lines, deliberate color accents: Kelly’s take on fashion and beauty.

Kelly is in her element when creating fashion and beauty imagery, exploring floral patterns, fabric textures, hair, skin tones, facial features and colour palettes to give her images a poetic balance between realism and fantasy. Her work has appeared in magazines and online, on products, promos and rendered large at events around the world. She has a BA in Fine Art from the Tasmanian School of Art.

Approach

Kelly’s approach is mainly traditional, with 90 per cent of the work completed using a graphite pencil. She then scans the drawing in, adding colour and tweaking the image using Photoshop.

Key Software

Photoshop

Style

Her intricately detailed pencil illustrations are soft and feminine in tone and content, with subtle areas of colour to catch the eye. As Kelly’s style has developed she’s introduced more colour to her work, sometimes bringing it to the fore to enhance contrast and impact.

Impressions

Interview

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Interview

What drew you to illustration/design?It was something that I just did from a very early age. I’ve always drawn, and I can’t imagine not doing it. Everything I have learnt and still learn only drives me further.Do you have any formal design training?I studied at the Tasmanian School of Art and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in both Graphic Design and Photography. Where are you originally from? Hobart. Where do you live now & what drew you there? I still live in Hobart. We get the best of both worlds here. It’s a small city nestled under a huge mountain, but situated by the sea. It’s absolutely beautiful. Where is your studio and can you describe it for me? I converted one of the spare bedrooms in my house into a studio that I could work out of. I painted the floorboards white, dragged in my desk and bookshelf, plastered the wall with magazine pages and that’s my little sanctuary. A life size Kate Moss hangs over my desk and Marion Cotillard for Lady Dior is on the opposite wall. Who or What is your biggest inspiration?Artistically I would say illustrators such as David Downton, Stina Persson, Julie Verhoeven and Kat Macleod. All are so unbelievably talented and unique. They’re who I aspire to be. If we’re talking ‘Muses’ then the faces I stare at on my studio wall all day include Sophie Dahl, Marion Cotillard, Kate Moss, Diane Kruger, Sasha Pivovarova and the amazing Gemma Ward. How do you get your ideas?All over. I get a lot of inspiration from couture shows, ready to wear, film, fashion photography, pop culture, nature. Literally everything. A lot of my ideas generally stem from something I’ve seen that I want to re-interpret or push further. Or just bizarre things that pop into my head that I think would make for interesting illustrations! Do you collect anything?Only magazines. I have piles and piles of them. They’re categorized into Title and/or cover subject. I’m literally addicted. Fashion Magazines are my vice. What is the first record you bought? It was the Grease soundtrack. I think I had to replace it about 3 times. I would play it over and over until it got chewed up in the tape player. Do you have a method for dealing with the feeling of having no ideas?I like to sit on the floor and pull out old magazines/books and just pour over the imagery for a while. There’s always SOMETHING that gets me raring to go again! If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go?I have a bit of a passion for Paris. I’ve only visited it once but it left the biggest impression on me. It’s like a postcard come to life. I love it. But I would also really love to travel to Sweden. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. The art and design that comes out of it, it’s amazing so that in itself is enough to entice me! If you could travel back in time, who would be the one person you would want to meet? Walt Disney. I’d just hug him and say 'Thank you'.

Favourites

Art Supplies: LYRA Art & Design pencils. F for outlines and B-3B for shading! Shop: Clothes-Country Road Website: The Fashion Spot Blog: Daydream Lily Magazine: Frankie