Hi, I’m Kate. (aka K8, Friday) I’m an artist illustrating characters and creating surface patterns with ink.
I love ink. My favorites are alcohol ink, in dropper and marker format. I also love needle felting and mixed media layering and embellishing. My style is heavily influenced by Dr. Suess and Toby Bluth, and I’m inspired by classic psychedelic art colors and patterns. Experiencing nature regularly inspires me to take risks and be silly. I’m obsessed with clouds, too, with their endless original shapes and textures.
What’s in the studio? Illustrating characters and creating surface patterns.
I am currently creating surface patterns for a Spoonflower shop and illustrating characters for a series of books about octopus friends who fart a lot and get into adventures. I’ve also got a book about clouds that’s really wanting to be birthed.
Come draw with me!
Most Wednesday mornings on Twitch, I spend a couple of hours illustrating characters and creating surface patterns, and chatting with folks. I love hearing from you, so join me in the chat and let’s talk! Or stay in the background and lurk. It’s all good!
Come on over to https://twitch.tv/3foldartco and join the fun! Follow my channel to be notified every time I go live. I’ll see you there!
Career
In the first half of my life, I was a graphic designer specializing in logos and branding for small businesses. While I loved the work, I never felt like “graphic designer” or “marketing expert” were words that described the real me, even though I’m a good graphic designer and I know a lot about marketing. I started streaming art, illustrating characters on Twitch in 2022 and I quickly realized drawing silly animals doing whimsical things was what I had been working toward my whole life.
I turn 50 years old in 2023, and less than a month till my birthday I am realizing that I now have the experience and the firm foundation to move on from what the world said was safe and move into living the dreams I had as a child. My mom has a trunk with notable homework from my childhood, which includes several short stories with illustrations. All I ever wanted to do was to draw pictures and invent stories to go with them, and now that’s what I do.
Shows
I have shown my work in the 2021 Vineyard Creative Imaginarium and Creative Festival, Ontario, Canada, and I’m the current Artist-in-Residence at Golden Heartland Academy.
Personal
I’m married to my soulmate, and we have an adult daughter who’s also an amazing artist, and a doggo Revan. In my spare time, I love mending and upcycling my clothes, camping, hiking, gardening, watching pro wrestling (AEW & The Collective), space documentaries, playing D&D with The Cave Kids, and hanging with The Rabbit Tribe KC, our Burning Man theme camp.
I’m a survivor of childhood and adult trauma, mostly healed from CPTSD, and completely healed from alcohol addiction. I contend with severe ADHD and RSD. I’ve done loads of inner work and therapy, including EMDR, 12-step, talk therapy, drug therapy, meditation, and most recently, story therapy in a Christian group setting. I’m happy to share my experience and what’s helped me. I live a deeply spiritual lifestyle that has given me complete freedom, and more life satisfaction than I ever thought I’d get. I was searching for a very long time before things got really good for me, and that’s too big to keep to myself.