Laura Dollie

Laura Dollie is a digital illustrator from Dayton, Ohio. Dollie creates artwork by combining the old and the new; she starts with sketching and then colors her sketches digitally. Laura Dollie studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design from which she received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration in 2010. Laura draws her inspiration from children, imagination, and her own childhood memories. Laura won the Applied Art Magazine Student Award in 2011 for her Green Peace poster advocating to stop pollution.

Laura Dollie illustrates by first sketching out the entire picture, and then digitally coloring it. She focuses her artwork around what she sees in her daily life. Laura works at a company that designs toys for children between her free-lance work, and she enjoys putting children and their adventures into her pieces. She takes the essence of childhood and imagination and brings to life magical childhood memories in her artwork.

The above picture is an example of Dollie's sketch almost ready to be digitally colored.

This is the finished, digitally-colored picture from the above sketch. Although this picture was digitally colored, it still looks as if it was colored by hand with pencils.

Laura Dollie also works in vector art using Adobe Illustrator. Much of her work in this field deals with making designs, logos, and characters for her job at a toy company called Peachtree Playthings. Dollie claimed that when she first started the job, she only knew the bare essentials of Illustrator and how to create vector art. Now, she says she is more confident in it than any other program.

 

Laura Dollie's work is very interesting because her collection is very diverse both in subjects and techniques. I enjoyed how she can create an illustration appropriate for a children's book by using both hand-sketching and digital coloring, but at the same time can make a piece like the one above, which is completely different. This picture caught my eye because of the colors and the cute faces found on each of the desserts. These features make this picture young, friendly and fun, and makes you reminisce about your childhood. I think that Laura Dollie's work mainly just makes you happy when you look at it. Her vector art may not be as detailed and advanced as her illustrations, but they still make you feel the same way when you observe them.