29 December 2016

Some Holiday Sketches by Kate Carleton

One of the artists I follow on social media, Kate Carleton, offered up discounted sketches in her webstore during the holidays. I already had a couple of her licensed sketch cards in my collection, but I wanted some art from her for my two main sketch collections, Princess Leia and Power Girl.


She made these while streaming on Facebook Live and I happened to be logged in at the time, so I got to watch the process. They were originally supposed to be smaller sketches, but she said she ran out of the smaller stock and wound up upgrading them to 5" x 7" illustration board, which is a bonus because artists usually scale up prices based on the size of the work. Watching the art being made is pretty cool, and it gives you an idea about the amount of work it takes to get these things done. Each of these sketches took 40-50 minutes from start to finish.

When I watched the video, my own personal hangups led me to misinterpret a couple of things that Kate said, and I wrote about it here. She contacted me with some clarification and I hope that I haven't soured her on selling art to me, as I am a big fan of her work. I put my foot in my mouth from time to time, and I feel bad about passing judgments on someone I don't know well based on a few minutes of video. Artists are people, too, and I am sorry that I jumped to conclusions. I am quite happy with the finished sketches, and I am glad to have Carleton art for both of my primary sketch card collections. I feel weird deleting my grouchy rant completely, but I did make it harder to read and I would encourage you not to read it. I hope that Kate Carleton will accept my apologies for writing it.

If the video has sound, you also learn what the artists think of your requests. It sounded like Kate was kind of disgusted by people who request Power Girl sketches, and she was a little burnt out on Star Wars. I could be reading too much into it, but I felt a little insulted. I know that people tend to view me as kind of a negative or slow person because of the way I speak, so I could also just be reading her voice and phrasing wrong, just like people do with me. There are plenty of nasty trolls in the fan bases of both characters. She doesn't know me personally, and maybe her interactions at conventions or online have created a certain impression in her mind. Most of us at least occasionally spend time complaining about our customers and/or our work. I just do my complaining squirreled away in a government office building, while artists doing videos are kind of out there in the open. As an art consumer, I just interact with the art as an excited recipient. For the artist, it is just work, like me grinding away at writing a contract. It was just a couple of comments that I could be overreacting to, but watching the rest of the videos is pretty neat. I don't want this to turn into a negative review, but that stuff has been stuck in my head and I needed to get it out. I am happy with her artwork and generally enjoy her posts.

I think these sketches turned out very nicely. I like Kate Carleton's work, and she is on the list of artists I regularly search out on eBay. She's also got some licensed and unlicensed sketch cards on her webstore in a variety of price ranges, so if you like what you see here there are a couple of venues to get your own Kate Carleton original artwork.

4 comments:

  1. Oh man... that's awesome that you were able to watch her draw your two sketches. Very, very cool.

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    1. Yeah, I was lucky enough to be online and paying attention when she started drawing.

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  2. Hey Raz!

    I'm sorry you got the wrong impression of me from my video. I didn't mean to come off that way at all. All I meant by being burnout by Star Wars is from doing alot of sketchcard sets at the time . They can be very tiring especially when I have a day job and do them in my freetime like right now. Don't get me wrong I love Star Wars and Princess Leia, I actually drew you my favorite version of her. Sketchcard sets do not pay well at all to be honest I do them because I love them and my fans who collect them like yourself. It doesn't mean I hate Star Wars by any means. Sorry if I came off as having a bad tone to you as well. I was probably tired from staying up late catching up on projects and was just answering questions that were being asked by people watching. I just wanted to do a fun short video and answer questions my fans had. Also I don't dislike Powergirl I just mentioned it was funny how it was my second one I was asked to draw. I don't think my voice comes off as annoyed or mad at all. Sorry that how you saw it. I'm also sorry if offering a bigger sketch size since I was out of my usual stock was a problem, from explaining the situation to you I thought it was fine. I guess we just had a whole bunch of misunderstanding I did not know about. If you ever have an issue you can always contact me and I'll try my best to resolve it. I'm just a little shock to find this blog about a facebook live video I did for fun showing my work which I thought would be fun for anyone watching, but I guess it was not. I hope you have a great day. Sorry you got the wrong impression of me.

    -Kate Carleton

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    1. I guess I could have been a little less sensitive about it all. I know that the card companies don't pay much for sketches, and it must be frustrating to work so hard for such a small return, especially when every customer's a critic. I probably did read too much into your remarks. I have an understated personality, and people misread me as being irritated all the time even when I'm ecstatic, and I should have been less judgmental of you.

      I am probably also probably oversensitive to comments about the characters I collect sketches of, since most of them are female. I like Leia, Power Girl, She-Hulk, and My Little Pony, and that makes me kind of an oddity among my work peers and family. That probably primes me to misread the things other people say about my collections.

      The larger sketches aren't an issue. I generally stick to trading card-sized art because of my budget, but I am not turned away by art in other sizes. I am very happy with the finished product on both of these, and I really enjoy having your art in my collection. Hoth Leia is one of my favorites as well, and one that you don't often see in fan art, at least compared with depictions of her in her Alderaan gown or dressed as Jabba's slave.

      It sounds like I misunderstood you and unnecessarily got my feeling hurt because of my own personal hangups. I'm sorry I misread you in the video and then ran off and wrote a blog post about it. I probably would have commented during the video, but it was on your personal page instead of your art page, and couldn't comment because we're not Facebook friends. I feel weird about sending friend requests to artists on their personal pages. I am definitely a fan of your work, and I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions based on a few minutes of misinterpreted video. I may go back and edit this post to be more positive, as I really am happy with the sketches, as well as the other art of yours that has found its way into my collection.

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