2024 Calendars available now! (1 of 4)

Excited to announce my artwork featured in FOUR 2024 calendars! Over the next four blog posts, I'll delve into each one.

Kicking off with Floral Ink 2024: This 16-month calendar showcases exclusively my still life paintings, marking the third edition created for Graphique de France. Collaborating with Graphique has been a delight, and their exceptional calendars truly complement my work. Through meditative strokes, I aim to encapsulate the essence of floral arrangements, bringing the beauty of everyday life to each month. Explore or purchase Floral Ink on Graphique’s website here or you can find it on Amazon here as well.

Pro tip: My mother removes the pages after each month and frames them for wall art. They look great!

I’ll write about the second calendar out now in my next post…

What's been happening this year: Update 2 of 6

I started licensing my work! So stoked!

Last fall, after an extremely helpful call with Giuseppe Castellano of The Illustration Department, I decided to revisit the resources in SCBWI's "The Book." I focused on a small group of art directors and agents that I'd like to work with, and I sent out emails to all of them. I am now fortunate to be represented by Lori Nowicki and Liz Wain of Painted Words licensing, and I couldn't be more grateful.

Watercolor of a scarlet ibis. One of the images picked up by GreenBox Art + Culture for 2018, watercolor and pencils, Copyright 2017 Kendra Shedenhelm

Debut of my licensed watercolors with GreenBox Art + Culture for 2017 (image posted on Instagram by my agent, Liz Wain of Wain's World and Painted Words Licensing

Art show at the local coffeehouse

Back in October, a friend in my town of Croton-on-Hudson suggested I show some of my watercolors at the local coffeehouse, The Black Cow.

With much gratitude, through the month of April, I am now having my first solo art exhibit since college. It feels pretty great. (:

Illustration Friday, "Hat"

This week's Illustration Friday topic was "Hat."

I first sketched a bird with an actual hat. Then I thought of the Eurasian hoopoe that I recently drew for a client, and the cool crown/hat that it already has. 

Using the scans of vintage drawings, I assembled this black and white bird with a hoopoe-style headdress. I also added a vignette effect to give it a slightly creepy, noir-esque tone.

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Picking up on the Illustration Friday challenges again

I've created art a couple times in 2015 for Illustration Friday's weekly challenge, but in 2016, I'm planning to submit something new at least one week each month. 

Below was my submission for last week's challenge, "Moon." 

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Busy October, gallery shows and more to come!

It has been a very long time since I've updated my blog, and I hope you're still catching my posts on Facebook and Instagram!

The month of October was a very busy and exciting time for me. I had a good deal of illustration work come in, AND I had my first group gallery show since college. In fact, I had TWO gallery shows in October — one opened in Iowa on the 16th and the other opened in NYC on the 24th. 

I'll update more about the illustration jobs soon, as well as details on an upcoming solo show, but here is a shot of the watercolor and collage work that was at the show in Cedar Rapids ("Rabbit," "Meeting the Wolf" and "Crow"). 

As always, your questions and comments are most welcome!