At the tender age of eleven, Rachel Heibel decided she really wanted to learn how to draw people. She would sit down for hours with a tablet and a #2 pencil drawing pictures of the celebrities featured in magazines.
After graduating high school in 2002, Rachel started to slip away from her drawing habit. She strayed further from her it after getting married in 2006 and having a baby five and a half years later. However, in 2013 she began learning how to 3D model within Blender, which reawakened the artist inside of her. She networked with a company called Theory Animation and joined their team as an animator.
At the beginning of 2017, she went back to her roots of drawing. She wanted to learn how to draw and paint digitally, and through a combination of tutorials, books, and teaching herself through trial and error, she learned how to paint in Photoshop.
Now Rachel has found a way to combine her love of art with her love of animals. She creates lifelike digital paintings of animals and uses her art to raise money for non-profit animal rescues.
I had the opportunity to interview Rachel to find out more about her artwork and what is involved in creating it. Let’s see what she has to say: