[Spotlight Post] Julie Dillon ArmadilloCon 34 Artist Guest of Honor
In continuing our ArmadilloCon Theme…I’ll finish up the week with Julie Dillon. I’ll admit I’d never heard of her before — but art is more of Jimmy’s area, not mine. But I know her now, and I’ll definitely be keeping my ears open for news of her.
Julie is a delightful person. We met her “accidentally” at ArmadilloCon when Jimmy was about to tell someone not to take pictures of her art in the art show, when the person was actually taking a picture of Julie in front of Julie’s artwork. Whoops. But she handled it well. We were a bit embarrassed; we should’ve recognized the Artist Guest of Honor.
Part of Julie’s Business Card.
I can tell you I won’t forget her. Julie’s insanely talented. I love the fact her stuff has unabashed COLOR. Not that other artists don’t, but there’s a lot of stuff that seem “muted” to me, or I’ve just been hanging around “darker” artists. Even her steampunk stuff seems to have brighter splashes of color and luminosity that appeal to me.
If you really want to check out her range of work, Julie has a DeviantArt site that has a great gallery. I love her range. And I can see why/how she’s moving into book covers. I would LOVE to have a Julie Dillon cover on one of my books. And it’s not that she’s just cool and I want to see her succeed, but for all that she does a lot of digital work (artists have to these days), her digital work has what I’ve always loved about Allen Williams’s work – the feel of “traditional” paintings even if they’re coming off a printer rather than an easel.
A couple of pages from her illustration book Jimmy won in the charity auction
And I don’t know how Julie works, I was always on panels when she was (and obviously not the same ones), so it’s possible she could start on canvas or paper then scan and go digital. Or she just has that talent of taking traditional techniques and can apply them to the digital world.
Oh, and the kicker to me? She gets Redheads “right” in her paintings. She’s got a piece called “Gold Sea” that could be any of us as a kid. And the steampunk goldfish are TOO DARNED CUTE.
She also doesn’t hoard her insight/information. She has a downloadable PDF on her site that is her Digital Illustration Tutorial. It was probably a talk/presentation she gave to an art class once upon a time that she wrote and added pictures to and has available as a PDF. If you’re an aspiring artist, or know one who’s up-and-coming, I would suggest downloading this tutorial. It’s free and really clear. She discusses her approaches, what worked, what didn’t, and why. I just found it, and it might actually talk about the above issues I mentioned (though it would all go over my head).
A couple more pages.
So check her out. You may not have heard of her YET, but you will. She’s got a long and colorful career ahead of her.