Art Portfolio

Who Am I?

Digital Pieces

Traditional Pieces

The View Within a Memory - Personal Comic

The Girl I Am - Collection

You can contact me at Keirajohnston2023@gmail.com !!

Who Am I?

My name is Keira Johnston, but I go by Eri! I'm a multimedia artist in the United States, and it's always been my dream to connect with others through my characters and storytelling. I aspire to be a comic artist in the future and publish works of my own.

Here, you can find a collection of my favorite works alongside my written descriptions about them.

Digital Pieces

Temptation in a Can

Procreate

As someone who's struggled with an addiction to soda, this piece is both a literal and not so literal metaphor for addiction. This drawing was made using one of my favorite color palettes: Yellow, green, and purple with accents of orange. I feel like that combination, weird as it is, represents me, and I feel so much more connected to pieces I make using it. I think that's why this is one of my favorite pieces in this lineup. I love the style of shading I used. It's so detailed, and it gives the piece a sketchier vibe. The can shading came out so beautifully, and I point it out every time I show this drawing to someone. With the background, I was going for a disorienting design to further the addiction message. I love bringing psychedelia into my work, and I also love working with bright and saturated colors. Everything came together so well, and it's such a fantastic depiction of my strengths.

Stoplight Trio

Procreate

I wanted to practice working with incredibly bright colors, so I set out to draw something album cover inspired using one of the main trios in my story. What I love about this piece is that each character is very clearly coded to one color, and they contrast so well with the background since it's a warm set against a cool colored base. I was trying to draw different facial features more accurately here as well, specifically Luke's since he's Asian and would have specific ethnic features. Something important here is that I was trying to work in a more simplified style, which is something I don't do often since I love the process of detail work. It benefits the picture by making it look cleaner and stylized. I also love that the lettering I did has the same vibe as the rest of the piece.

Funky Fit

Procreate

This drawing was done purely for fashion study, but I took it as an opportunity to work on some dynamic posing as well. I had a lot of fun doing the print on the character's shirt, and I loved adding smaller details to bring in the accent colors, such as the earrings and the sunglasses. The shading on this piece is also very detailed, and I love how much it adds to the 2000s summer vibe. There's something so satisfying about sharp and dark shading against lighter shading and bounce light. I used both hard and soft shading for this piece. The skin was created to be a lot smoother than the hair and clothes, simply because I wanted to see how the two textures would interact when put together. The personality in this piece is practically bursting out, and I love that about it so much. You don't know the character, but you understand who he is just because of the way he's posing and the outfit he's wearing. I'm obsessed with how effective the "show don't tell" principle can be in art.

In The Zone

Procreate

The goal for this piece was to effectively combine digital realism and digital pop art. I worked with a limited color palette, having the navy blue, yellow, and pink as main colors while the lighter blue and green became accents. I wanted to capture the playful feeling of calling someone important in your life, such as a crush or best friend. The piece was made to be a mix of 70s and 80s nostalgia, and I specifically focused on music and sound. I also had a lot of fun with the shapes on the subject's sweater as well as the composition of the phone cord and vinyl records. There's a charm to the poster-like look of the piece, and I think it does the trick at conveying a younger, more teenage vibe

Cam and Jimena

Procreate

I was playing with cell shading for this piece, and I think it gave it a sleek stylized look. With the lighting, I was going for a nice sunset glow, and again, I'm showing the characters existing together to get a more three-dimensional feeling. I love the posing for this piece, especially the left character's arms. I also love the flow of the right character's hair, and I think the dye gradient in it adds a lot of depth. The lineart on this piece is very clean, and I experimented with coloring it instead of using a multiply layer to unify it with only one color.

Snack Stop

Procreate

I wanted to draw my characters into an actual environment to envision how they'd be interacting in such a setting. The biggest part of storytelling is being able to put your characters into a universe and have them interact, after all. I imagine they're having a conversation about school or something, just chilling and picking up some snacks at their local gas station. Putting them into an environment brings them to life, and it makes the drawing mean so much more than if it were just a couple characters floating in space. It also gave me a chance to practice perspective.

The Spirit's Lament

Procreate

Losing a pet is just as painful as losing a family member, and I learned that when my cat, Paris, passed away. This piece is a tribute to her, as I've added her into my ghost centered story that explores themes of life and death and how grief affects humans. Love and grief go hand in hand, and they can be experienced in so many different forms. Capturing her in an art piece as an artist is my way of moving through the grief process step by step. Having her in one of my stories feels like the best gift I could give to the best cat in the world.

Couple on a Bench

Procreate

This is a commissioned piece I did for a friend of mine's anniversary with her boyfriend. She asked me to recreate a photo of them in a park, and I thought it'd be a great opportunity to work on drawing nature based environments. The key to creating a good background containing foliage is to know that it shouldn't be oversimplified or overdone. Adding too much or too little detail distracts from your characters. I think I effectively captured the background without going too detailed or distracting from the focal point. I also love the lighting in this piece, and I think it turned out beautifully. A particular detail that I think enhances it is the reflected light within the shadows.

Best Friends

Procreate

One of the most important things about character work is that you know how to show your characters interacting. It's one thing to say that you have characters, but when you make them interact with each other, they become real and so much more three-dimensional. That's what I set out to do for this piece: I wanted my own cast of characters to be together in one picture and each have their own distinct personalities shine through. I think I pulled off the interaction particularly well with the two characters up top, as they're in a friendly scuffle with each other. The colors for this piece have a somewhat vintage vibe, and mixed with the background, I think it has a cozy feeling to it.

Character Lineups

I try to put distinct features and variations into my characters to make them stand out more. I also love to change my art style for each story I make, because I find it more fun and creative to assign each universe I'm writing a specific style that suits it.

All done in Procreate.

The Ache of Solitude

Procreate

I wanted to capture the feeling of loneliness even when you have people to support you. With depression, it's hard to feel loved or even noticed despite how many people say they're there for you. I was experimenting with coloring techniques in this piece to capture that vibe, and to show that the friends aren't actually there, I kept their color schemes monochromatic to contrast the main character of the piece. Another coloring technique I utilized was adding a gradient in the background that's darker at the bottom and around the edges of the piece, focusing the lightest area behind the face and upper body of the focal character. I also played with the composition of characters and placed them in positions that created an interesting silhouette.

Traditional Pieces

Manipulation

Mixed Media - 21'' x 27''

Sometimes, capturing a feeling can be done without using facial expressions or posing to do the trick. For this piece, I consciously chose to make the subject based on a Greek statue and so he is lacking limbs that would allow him to block himself from the control of those around him. I wanted to create a bursting effect around the area where his heart has been ripped from his body, and to do this, I placed a bunch of cut out pieces of paper in an exploding motion. I used string to give a more gory illusion, and it also leads the viewer's eye around the piece. I think that the string being in a tangled mess inside the hole in the chest makes it feel more emotional, because it represents the turmoil inside of the subject that cannot be expressed otherwise.

Nature Takes Over

Watercolor, paint pens, and ink - 13'' x 18''

I've always been inclined to create pieces that are more whimsical in nature, and this one was no exception. I combined pop art with a more realistic looking ink drawing, and I think the mix turned out lovely. I was messing with composition, especially when it came to the water flowing out of the television. I wanted to capture movement that would lead your eye around the piece, and I think the circular formations of both the vines and the fish add to this. I used very few colors, as something I love to do with my work is choose a specific color scheme and stick with it. I feel that it always makes the piece more cohesive to do so.

Beach Still Life

Colored pencil - 15'' x 18''

For this still life, I created my own composition of items in order to do it. I chose things that reminded me of the beach, and I wanted the color scheme to be pinks, greens, and yellows with hints of blue. Something I specifically love about this piece is the transparency I captured on the focal flower's petals. It's a subtle detail, but it adds so much depth to the image. I also love how detailed the turtle came out. I was very focused on making the shadows of this piece look nice and sharp. The lighting I used created harsher shadows, and I think they really help the objects stand out against the lighter background. The piece also can be read with tones of environmentalism, as that's something that I'm passionate about.

Ode to Creation

Acrylic paint on canvas - 20'' x 16''

When I draw portraits, I almost never draw myself because I'm trying to tell other stories. For this piece, I wanted to tell my own story as an artist and create a tribute to my own work. It's as if I'm in the middle of painting the actual piece, and I think it has such a playful feeling behind it. Surrounding me are a bunch of ripped up drawings I've done in the past alongside puzzle pieces, which not only represent the idea of putting things together to create a bigger picture, but also the fact that I am autistic and it's part of my identity. I think it's so easy to get caught up in other worlds and stories that we forget that our own experiences are just as important in shaping our journeys as artists.

The Cries Behind the Curtain

Mixed Media - 20'' x 10'' x 2.5''

I've always found myself interested in stories of celebrities that suffered with mental health issues as a result of being famous. One of the more famous cases of this is Marilyn Monroe. The tragic idea of having all that a regular person could want but still struggling to smile through it due to burnout and stress is one that plagues my mind. It's a beautiful example of how fame and fortune can't always bring happiness with it, and that you often have to find your own light in your life no matter the circumstances surrounding you. This piece is inspired by all the celebrities that have ended up dying because they were suffering in silence.

The View Within a Memory - Personal Comic

Procreate

This is a short eight page comic I wrote about a man telling his wife his imaginative ideas for an invention he believes could make for beautiful experiences. However, as the story progresses, the reader finds that sometimes, established dreams may not always happen the way you want them to, and that the absence of someone leaves a permanent empty space in your life no matter the circumstances.

This comic was written to convey the effect of loss and grief on a person and how it can change prior commitments.

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The Girl I Am - Collection

A six piece set of works I did to convey the theme of living in a world that is not built for you.

The title of each piece creates a poem I wrote when read in order.

More often than not, when someone hears the word “autism”, they think of the stereotypical autistic caricature that the entertainment industry has pushed. Due to there being so little representation of diverse autistic people, many issues that we go through are hardly known about by non-autistic folks. The truth is, living with autism in a world built for allistics is a draining experience, and it can lead to self hatred and even self destructive behavior, and that’s what I wanted to say in this collection of pieces. With so little information out there beyond the basic stereotype, everyone is constantly telling you how your own disability works. Just try hard enough, and you’ll learn to ignore things. Just try hard enough, and you’ll learn what other people want to see in you. Just try hard enough, and you’ll learn what “normal” means. And so, we do try. We put on these masks and pretend to be what we assume we should be, pretending we understand things that we struggle to grasp and trying to fit in with a crowd that would be surprised if they knew the truth. But, like puzzle pieces, you can’t put something where it doesn’t fit. You can pretend it goes somewhere, but the shape, the real identity of that piece, always shows through. Just as puzzle pieces can’t alter themselves to fit where you want them to, people cannot alter their true identities. I wanted to voice the frustration of being autistic and never being able to hide that part of yourself in these pieces. Each one represents the fragile connection between the true and false identities that we often split ourselves into, and the strain it has on our psyche. I intentionally used a complementary color scheme in order to convey the opposite nature of both identities, even if they’re the same person. The added green and blue are accents that give the pieces this intimidating and mysterious undertone, and they compliment the main colors well. Each piece is done in a different style to pay homage to the diversity within the autism community. Despite these different stylistic approaches, the central theme is the same in each piece, because these frustrations are so incredibly common across autistic individuals of all kinds.