Nikki D. May
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About Me

I am an artist and designer from Paducah, Kentucky. I spend my days drinking too much coffee and trying to save the world from bad design. I really just want to draw pretty pictures.

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My Instagrams

Is it just me, or does the center of my Indian Bla Is it just me, or does the center of my Indian Blanket (Oklahoma’s state flower) look like the coronavirus? Swipe to see a closeup! #ijustwanttodrawprettypictures
New stickers from @stickermule! One of my very fav New stickers from @stickermule! One of my very favorite southern flowers. #magnolia #ijustwanttodrawprettypictures
With all the craziness going on in the world and e With all the craziness going on in the world and everyone stuck inside their houses, I love how generous people are being now with sharing other artists’ work and giving away products and courses and services for free!⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ I’d love to have the time to give away some branding or website help, but as a self-employed person who works from home on a bunch of ongoing projects, my day-to-day life doesn’t look any different.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ But what I can do is offer some beauty to the world and something to keep people busy. I’ve made a mini version of the 50-page coloring book I plan to make when I complete my State Flowers + Insects project. 10 pages of flowers and insects for you to print and color!⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Visit the link in my bio or visit nikkimay.com/coloring to grab your own copy!
Hey friends! I’ve been trying to figure out what Hey friends! I’ve been trying to figure out what I can offer during this time of everyone being stuck at home and I finally figured it out! My work situation hasn’t changed, so I don’t have a lot of free time to offer, but what I do have is a ton of drawings of flowers and insects. So, I’m going to start offering free downloadable coloring pages and I want your help choosing which ones! Take a look through my past Instagram posts and if you see one you’d like to color yourself, comment on that post and let me know! #ijustwanttodrawprettypictures
The world is in chaos. Here’s a pretty girl to l The world is in chaos. Here’s a pretty girl to look at. #ijustwanttodrawprettypictures
Still catching up… March 11th of #marchmeetthema Still catching up… March 11th of #marchmeetthemaker is “product range.” Here’s a timely one, a little side product range that I work on sporadically. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ I collect little broken porcelain figurines, unique little containers and any other random thing I think I can display an air plant in! They aren’t what I’d consider part of my art or design portfolio – just a fun little side project. ⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ I mostly sell them locally in Paducah at @ravenandmothllc and at in-person events, but sometimes someone sees one I post and I can ship it.
March 10th of #marchmeetthemaker is “Authentic s March 10th of #marchmeetthemaker is “Authentic space.” I posted some beautiful images of my neat and organized studio and office a few days ago, but it stays like that for about 10 minutes. I’m really really messy. I never put things back where they belong. I pile things on every horizontal surface. I’m surrounded by crap all the time! I have a really great workspace that is hardly ever usable because every horizontal surface is covered with crap! Send help! And yes, that’s a dead squirrel in a ziploc bag. Don’t you have one of those in your studio?
Still catching up… March 9th of #marchmeetthemak Still catching up… March 9th of #marchmeetthemaker is “Rough/Mock up” and I’m going to talk more about the design side here instead of the art.⁠ Here’s an example of a recent logo I completed. ABODE Contemplative Care for the Dying is a beautiful home in San Antonio that cares for three guests who need space and care at the end of their lives. They have used several different versions of a logo over the last few years with the image of a tree of life or tree of contemplative practices (the last three images). The concept is great for their mission, but needed a bit of tweaking. I was approached to update the logo and expand their branding to feel more like the space and connect more to their mission.⁠⠀ I added a house shape and a simplified tree drawing to make a logo that is more easily reproduced and identifiable. The trunk of the tree starting off wider at the bottom and narrowing to a vanishing point as it goes up represents the journey the guests are embarking on. The color blue for the logo and the other brand colors are taken from the original painting that the old logo was based on. The color is also found throughout the house and even on their coffee mugs. The colors represent calm, strength, tranquility, peace, healing...⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Sometimes I do a gazillion sketches on paper to work out ideas. Sometimes I skip the paper sketches and go straight to designing in Illustrator, but this represents the process of the majority of projects. One strong concept and several variations in sketches before brining it into Illustrator and refining it.
Still catching up with #marchmeetthemaker... I con Still catching up with #marchmeetthemaker... I considered scrapping it since I'm so far behind, but I like to finish what I start! So...Days 7 and 8 prompts for #marchmeetthemaker are “You” and “Love to make” — I’m combining them in an effort to catch up and because what I want to tell about myself includes what I love to make. You often hear how artists are so right-brained - creative, free-spirited, not technical, not good at math. Obviously this is a stereotype — but I often find it to be true when talking to other artists. I’m not like that. I’d say I’m pretty evenly balanced between left and right brain, creative and technical, art and math. I never considered a career path other being an artist when I was growing up. But I also was very into math and was in the math honor society in high school. I took a class in 10th grade that taught me how to write programs to solve math problems. I may, in fact, be the only art major in the history of the world to have taken calculus as an elective in college. So, although I studied fine art in college and grad school, I got a job doing graphic design and illustration and then I accidentally ended up with a career in web design. I truly love both sides - creative/technical, right-brain/left-brain. I’ve found that the design and technical side of things has seeped into my art and my drawings are very precise, detailed and highly designed. I love doing these drawings and it satisfies one side of my brain tremendously. But then I miss the looser, freer, more intuitive side and that’s more satisfied by the collage/mixed media work that I do. Scroll through these images to see a random mix of both sides of my brain and both sides of my art! My favorite work is when I’m able to combine both sides in one piece!
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