Leslie Cardiel
Illustrator. Animator.
Resume
Leslie Victoria Cardiel was born in Oxnard in 1993 and predominantly grew up and still resides in Ventura, California. She is attending California State University of Channel Islands to earn her Bachelors of Arts degree around the end of 2017. She is currently receiving commissions over the internet to attract a wide range of customers. Outside of internet popularity, Leslie is active in local art shows and contests in Camarillo, such as the annual student art shows. Her illustrations are based on her personal interests and experiences growing up in a small, quiet town. Her main inspiration comes from her love of video games and animation and admiration for cultural diversity.
Artist Statement
My purpose in creating digital illustrations is to push my boundaries when it comes to anatomy, color, and detail. My thoughts when making the initial sketch is to never make it boring or static. If the pose is simple then use color to make it appealing and render it to a polished, yet painterly work. The reason why sometimes I don’t paint over my sketches is because they contain a great amount of raw energy that I don’t want to lose. When I do color it, I don’t blend in every stroke to create a painterly aesthetic. So from afar it looks like clean picture, but up close you can see where the artist moved the brush. Whenever I see other paintings that follow this art style, I go up close to analyze how the colors work against another.
The inspiration for my color palette is the sky during twilight. It never looks exactly the same each day. For example, more clouds will form, or it’s more blue than orange. Though they’re not the only colors I use in my artwork, pink, orange and purple are more prominent as a result.
The subject of my drawings is almost always at least one human figure. Practicing human anatomy and all its diverse forms is a challenge, but to me, I feel it’s an important part to explore. Within this, my focus leans more to people of color. In this generation, even though it’s gradually become more progressive than the last, brown people, especially women, are very underrepresented. I never realized how much of an issue this was until I thought about my adolescence, where I distanced myself constantly from my ethnicity because the media I consumed made attractiveness synonymous with “thin, fair-skinned, and straight hair”. I grew up reclaiming my pride of my own physical features and later wanted to express that through art