Fat Owl Fashion is so incredibly excited to present our next Fat owl Featured artist: Rachel G!

Rachel G.

is a 29 year old artist, educator, and programmer from Lincoln, NE. They have an extensive background in biology, and are actually first and foremost a scientific and medical illustrator, although nowadays they devote most of my time and energy to my work as a science educator and volunteer work with the local natural history museum.
Rachel’s art will be familiar to long time Fat Owl Fans, as their designs are featured in our Fat Owl Signature collection, as well as on many of our buttons.
In addition to working with Fat Owl since it started in 2015, they are also part of the indie game developer CoffeeSnake Studios.
You can find more of Rachel’s art on CoffeeSnake's page, and on their personal portfolio, twitter, RedBubble, and tumblr.

How would you describe your art?

Technical. I prefer to work precisely, with clean lines and details.

How did you get started making art/how long have you been an artist?

I've been doing art pretty much forever? I started doing art 'professionally' when I was a freshman in high school, when I got a job as a face and body painter.

What's your favorite thing to create?

I love having an excuse to create osteological illustrations (read: I like drawing bones), but anything in pen-and-ink is a winner for me.

What influences do you have?

Lana Johnson and Angie Fox were my foundational inspirations to get a start with scientific illustration. The work of Ursula Vernon, Emily Willoughby, H. Khyot Lutermann, Jennifer 'Nambroth' Miller, and Todd Lockwood have been majorly influential on my attitude and goals, if not directly on my art style. I also can't credit anyone specifically, but fantasy cover artists and the novels they decorate are also a huge influence on the kind of art I do for myself.

What's most important to you when you create something?

That I actually enjoy making it. I have a vast graveyard of half-done personal pieces that I've scrapped because I wasn't having fun working on them any more. Life's too short to miserably slog through something you're not even getting paid for.

What's your creative process look like?

I either spend hours and hours collecting references, iterating thumbnails, color studies, and compositional sketches, and refining layer after layer of underdrawings, OR I do one or two layout/rough sketches and dive right into detailed painting. It's 50/50 either way as to whether or not I like the finished product.