Bio

Hello there!  I'm Meghann Pardee, and I am the artist you want on your next project.  I'm skilled in both traditional and digital art, and love to work with clients personally to make the ideas in their mind visible for the rest of the world.

The links to the side will lead you to my gallery and blog, but if we're going to work together, you'll want to know if we'll fit personality-wise.  So here's some information about me.

I've always lived in Michigan, but my travels to Europe and the East Coast of America were wonderful experiences and I would really like to return to England and New York since my time was was so limited.  (I also went to France, Belgium, and Amsterdam.)  I never get tired of visiting Chicago when the opportunity arises.

I grew up liking vampires and horror films, though I'm still easily scared of the dark and the things that bump in it.  My Top 3 vampire movies are: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Let The Right One In, and Thirst.  I prefer the 30 Days of Night comics to both movies, and think American Vampire is awesome.  I've seen all of the Universal Monsters movies but need to catch up on the horror films made between then and the '90s.  With the help of a pillow and fiance to hide behind, I'm finally making my way through them.

I love reading, although the last several years there is a higher pictures-to-words ratio than when I was younger.  Sandman will always be my top graphic novel, but as I said American Vampire and 30 Days are currently my favorites.  Thanks to discovering Dustin Ngyuen's artwork, I've been buying every Batman comic I can get my hands on for the last three years.

Now that you know whether or not we have similar tastes, because, let's be honest, those are the things that matter when two people start a relationship (as paraphrased from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.)  However, this is going to be an artist-client relationship, so let me tell you about my art background.

 I've been drawing since I was old enough to hold crayons, and started doing portraits around age 5 because I saw a picture of the Mona Lisa.  From then on, I thought I was going to be a fine artist.  It wasn't until I met a writer online and spent four years doing character designs and scenes from his stories that I decided I wanted to do illustration.  The notion of drawing someone else's ideas had never occurred to me.

The writer had also been developing his own role-playing game, which I had never taken part in before, and it captivated me.  This world-creation was fascinating and when I later met guys playing Dungeons & Dragons and much later World of Darkness, I was hooked.  I also decided those were where I most wanted my art to be featured.

I am an alumni of Kendall College of Art and Design, where I learned traditional and digital painting.  I also took printmaking, which I really enjoyed and helped me discover new techniques and styles to incorporate into my illustrations.

My latest work was a redesign of the cover for Stay by C.C. Jackson. I am currently working on the cover for Demons of the Fall by R.P. Kraul. I recently finished the book cover for the adventure novel Dartboard by J. D. Gordon to be published by The Little Things Publishing.  I also did the digital inking for Evelyn Evelyn: a Terrible Tale in Two Tomes, which is available from Dark Horse Comics.  My previous work includes making two maps for Gaming Paper, and a book cover for the supernatural romance Fireflies.

My long term goals are to be an art professor and/or director.  I want to teach for two reasons: to help artists develop their own styles while still learning proper art techniques, and summer vacation.  What?  As if that isn't on someone's mind when they decide to teach.  I really enjoy working with others, and really like to help someone develop the ideas they have.  I was assistant editor on the previously-mentioned writer's story, and I know how to tell an artist that a limb is too short or something needs to be shaded differently.  I've worked as art director on two small projects, and with my memory for artists I come across online, I know as a director I'd be able to find the right style for projects.  There is nothing as annoying as having a project due and in my mind I know exactly how it looks, but it's in a style I can't master in time to finish the project.  This is part of why I want to be an art director.  I can think up an idea then hand it over to the artist already skilled in a certain look.