Featured Artist | Matthew Taylor Wilson

You may recognize this month's featured artist, he is well known amongst Studio Calico enthusiasts. Matthew Taylor Wilson, is the head in house designer for Studio Calico. Matt is always making us laugh with his perfectly timed one liners and making us smile with his perfectly unique designs. Many of the items in your kit this month were designed by Matt (aka @thewellkeptthing) and we like to brag on him now and then. Look for Matt and follow his updates on studiocalico.com/meet-the-team.

What's your role at Studio Calico?

I'm the Sr. Designer at SC and my role is to design product. I do a lot of that. I draw, paint, stamp, jump, cartwheel, breakdance & consume caffeinated beverages to make whatever it is that I'm tasked with producing.

Can you tell us about your creative process? What mediums do you work with, what inspires you?

My process is a simple one: I draw stuff whenever possible. That is the short version. The more detailed version is that I draw everything and then I used the Adobe Creative Suite because it's industry standard and you can't get away from it. I have a pentel colorbrush that I use & love. It gets used as often as I can work it in. I work mostly in black & white, which has always just kinda been a preference of mine but it also stems from my impatience with scanners. If I draw everything in high contrast black & white I can use my iphone to take a photo. It's not the industry recommended process for digitizing traditional media but...I'm punk. I don't care. I clean up the lines and shapes to an acceptable degree in photoshop and use a tracing program (that will remain nameless because you can't give away all your secrets). Once it's vector I can better manipulate the images into whatever I need them to be. That is the general idea for most of my work.

We’d love to see more of your art! Could you share a couple of your favorite projects?

I did a series of illustrations for Goodreads.com when they started sending a Young Adult Newsletter. That was a fun project. It was a really loose, collaborative project and they were super fun to work with.

You can also find me here : http://society6.com/thewellkeptthing

Would you mind giving us a peek into your creative space?

Thank you, Matthew, for giving us a peek behind the scenes!