Amanda Kastner⬥StorySeamstress

Hello, friends! Today I have a video to share! I decided to timelapse this watercolor painting I did for Questless . It was easier to record than I remembered, so maybe I'll record more of my painting process in the future. You can watch the timelapse here! See the painting process for Questless's alternate watercolor cover! In other news, I just posted the first episode of FOUND , my 5-episode short story comic! It was interesting adapting my art style to a scrolling format with minimal dialogue. I think I'm pleased with it so far: take a look! Now I'm off to make sure I have the next episode ready in time...and maybe I'll have some FOUND behind-the-scenes videos to share in the future. Thanks for joining me on this journey! Amanda

Hello, Friends! Spring is slowly springing around here (I saw some wild violets this week!) and I'm looking forward to summer's arrival. I'm also looking forward to working on a few new projects... Questless If you’ve been following me for a while you probably know about Questless, my ongoing webcomic/graphic novel . I'm glad to have the opportunity to share Questless with subscribers over on Line Webtoon , but I'm excited to see the story on the pages of a book, the way I designed it. And now that Chapter One is almost done, it’s time to print the book! But if there's a book, that means I need a cover... So for the last week I’ve been brainstorming cover ideas, and I think I found it! Here’s the rough sketch, and a rather sloppy color test. Since I finished most of the artwork for Questless a few months ago and then tackled another project in a different style--more on that in a bit!--getting back into the Questless groove for the cover took a little time. (And

Hello, friends! If your March was anything like mine, it was quite...unexpected. (Anyone else feel like you've video chatted more in the last month than the rest of your life combined?) I'd like to share a happy distraction, so here is a collection of 12 Jane Austen greeting cards to print and color--for free ! If you need something fun and relaxing to do, get out your colors and turn on a Jane Austen audiobook!* Bonus: You'll have a card to send to a friend. :) Click here to download the FREE printable PDF! Six pages (2 cards per page) formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper.*I recently re-re-listened to Persuasion on LibriVox , narrated by Elizabeth Klett--she does an amazing job on this and many other Jane Austen books! As you can see, the Jane Austen pins arrived, and I love them! My sister and I spent a few afternoons last week sorting, packaging, and shipping out the first orders. It's super fun to see my designs come to life. Thanks to my amazing Kickstarter ba

Hello, friends! Today I'm launching my first-ever set of hard enamel pins on Kickstarter! You can get all the details here. Designing the Anne & Diana Enamel Pins The design process for these pins started with some tiny, 1" scribble-sketches in the back of my one-year project planner. (Side note: this planner has become an inspiration/idea catch-all in addition to weekly project to-do lists and I'm really loving it!) Next, I opened Clip Studio Paint and sketched the idea again digitally. The finished pins will be about 1.25" tall, so I scaled my sketch accordingly! I used a black brush to draw my final line art over the blue sketch. The black lines are on a new layer so I can easily hide the sketch when I'm finished. And here are the lines without the sketch behind them! The lines show the part of the pin where the metal will show. Now the fun part--color! I chose the colors from a Pantone color chart to help make sure the actual pins are more-or-less the col

If you follow me on Instagram , are one of my Patreons , or get my newsletter you probably know what's been keeping me busy lately... My first graphic novel! I've been posting the story online in weekly episodes (it finishes the end of April 2019--you can catch up here!) and now I'm ready to print it as a 100+ page book. This is what 100+ pages of story looks like--whew! You can check out the Imaginarium Kickstarter campaign if you'd like to pre-order a signed copy of the book--plus some other fun stuff like posters, pins, and original artwork!  Oh, and I have one last thing to share... free wallpapers! :)

Hello friends! Here is the final part of the 3-part series about creating my webcomic/graphic novel, Imaginarium . Part 3: Sharing the Story Guys, I've decided this is my favorite image from this series of emails: 100 pages (+2 short stories) all in one place! Yay! Now I have a story...but who will read it? My goal was always to make a printed book, but I knew that online it would find a wider audience as a webcomic. So, it's time to make Imaginarium webcomic-friendly! I took my finished pages, chopped them up, and rearranged them into a long, scrolling format that's easier to read on small screens. It was an interesting challenge to reformat my pages, making lots of decisions on how to cut and space the panels to give a smooth reading experience! I tried to choose natural breaking points for each weekly episode, usually turning two pages into an episode. I used several different cover images for the story...I'm still learning and experimenting, but the goal is an intr

Hello friends! This is part 2 of the 3-part series about creating my webcomic/graphic novel, Imaginarium . I hope you'll enjoy this little glimpse behind the scenes! Part 2: Drawing When you think about drawing a graphic novel, this is the part you probably think of first. But really, it turned out to be the easy step! Time-consuming, sure, but much less mental work that the planning/writing stage. In March and April of last year I gave myself a goal of drawing something every single day, even if it was only a few lines. At the end of two months, I had all of the pages drawn, inked, and scanned. This what 120 inked pages look like! Working from the thumbnails I had already figured out for each page, I first sketched the pages in pencil then went over the lines with ink. Page Process: Thumbnail, Inks, Scan, Color! If you want to see scans of all the original pages (seriously, all of them!) they're available at the "Honored Guest" tier on my Patreon! Page Rules To keep

Hello friends! This week I'm starting a short, 3-part series about creating my webcomic/graphic novel, Imaginarium . I hope you'll enjoy this little glimpse behind the scenes! Part 1: Planning When I'm working on a story-based project I've found I need to have decided on these two things before I can really get started: 1) Characters & Setting 2) A theme! 1) Characters & Setting For me, this is the part that usually comes first. It basically answers questions like, who, when, where? I had the idea of an eccentric baron who, in pursuit of the perfect estate, hires all of the necessary characters--a phantom, a hermit, a band of outlaws... Later I coupled this idea with the image of a girl washed up on a beach beneath a castle. Who was she? Why was she there? I had no clue, but I wanted to find out! So, I had a general setting and a cast of could-be-interesting characters, but without a theme to give meaning to the story, they'd just wander around pointlessly

I can't believe it's almost March--where has the time gone? I haven't posted much online lately (though I'm always working on something) so I thought I'd share a couple of small 5"x7" watercolors I've done this month.  This was a super quick painting with a 3/4" flat brush. Kinda sloppy, but kinda fun to use a larger brush than usual! I've been listening to The Lord of the Rings audiobook over the last several weeks, and I love that the adventures in both The Fellowship and The Hobbit begin with a kitchen full of dishes --Tolkien clearly knew what he was talking about. :)