Artist Profile: Kristin Link
Photo by Richard Kahn
Kristin Link sketches in the field as an Artist in Residence at Gates of the Arctic National Park.
Michelle McAfee - CRR Staff
Faded bell-bottom jeans hang from a red rope between cottonwood trees near Kristin Link’s home in McCarthy, Alaska. Stunning illustrations of black ravens with blue iridescence in detailed feathers adorn each leg of the jeans; some birds in flight, one on a branch. The illustrations are life-like and show the motion of flight and a gleam in one raven’s eye.
The illustrator is Kristin Link, winner of the 2021 Alaska Press Club Best Illustration Award and artist for the Copper River Record Nature Journal. The jeans belong to Jewel, who will wear them during music performances.
Link was born in the rainy climate of Belgium. She spent a lot of time making arts and crafts with her sister and brother at her mom’s art table when it was raining outside. Her grandmothers were also a strong creative influence on her as a kid. Link’s paternal grandmother did a lot of crafting, sewing, baking, and cooking. Her maternal grandmother was a watercolor painter with a small art education background. She would paint and draw with her grandkids. Link grew up experimenting and playing in her grandmother’s studio and was influenced by her work.
Jewel’s performance jeans with Kristin Link’s illustrations. Photo by Kristin Link
When Link was seven years old, her family moved to Jersey and then to London when she started high school.
“My parents were supportive of the arts and of me doing art, but the culture I grew up in never really put art forward as a career, so it didn’t feel like the best option,” Link said.
After graduating from high school, Link went to a liberal arts college in Vermont and took on a double major in art and environmental studies, focusing on biology. While working on her final project in art, Link started drawing things her biology classes were studying.
Link took a one-year illustration program at California State University at Monterey Bay after moving to Alaska and graduating from college. That program gave her a sense of confidence in her artistic abilities. Link knew she liked drawing, but the program broke it down to square one of how to draw a subject, which also helped her learn how to teach drawing techniques.
Kristin illustrating a raven on clothing. Photo by Kristin Link
Kristin Link hesitated when asked about natural talent.
“I enjoyed drawing, so I practiced it a lot, which looks like natural skills. I think naturally enjoying that slow, meditative process looks like talent, but it’s something anyone can learn,” she said. Link teaches different drawing techniques to practice hand/eye coordination. She helps students slow down and practice drawing what they see instead of what they think they see.
“Two of my favorite drawing exercises are blind contour drawing and gesture sketching. They are pretty common exercises but are tools I use all the time when I’m drawing.”
Blind contour drawing is drawing one continuous flow line of the contour shape of your subject without looking at your paper. You are drawing what you see, not looking at your paper.
Gesture sketching is trying to capture the main shape and movement of the subject.
“I time my students for 20-30 seconds per drawing, and they make these big movements. It’s different from contour drawing. It’s just capturing the shape and movements,” Link said.
An illustration from Kristin’s nature journal. Photo by Kristin Link
If you’ve been reading the Copper River Record for a while, you have seen Link’s illustration work in the weekly Nature Journal. Every week Link draws something from the environment around her.
“I keep a sketchbook and draw a bunch of different subjects. I challenge myself to draw things I don’t feel comfortable drawing in that book, and sometimes they don’t turn out well.” She laughs as she recalls some of the sketches that didn’t make her grade,
“Again, it goes back to that practice. I’m not perfect at drawing everything. In 2020 when I was regularly doing my journal, I was trying to draw ice because it’s really hard. It was fun just to draw different forms of ice. The reflections in ice can be challenging.”
When the Alaska Press Club Awards came around last year, the Copper River Record submitted an illustration Link did of a snow scorpionfly. A scientist was in the McCarthy area studying and looking for endemic snow scorpionflies. Link talked with her about her research and wrote an article in the Copper River Record. CRR submitted it to the Alaska Press Club, and that illustration won the Alaska Press Club Best Illustration Award!
Photo courtesy of Kristin Link
Kristin Link’s scorpionfly illustration that won Best Illustration in 2021 for Alaska Press Club’s Best Illustration Award.
Link’s illustrations also appear in Edible Alaska. The owner of the clothing company 4 Kinship, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, visited Alaska and saw Link’s work in the magazine. She reached out to Link about drawing illustrations on clothing for singer-songwriter Jewel.
“I appreciate her taking that leap of faith, seeing my work on paper in a magazine and trusting that I could draw on clothing. It’s really fun, but it’s also a very different way of working,” Link said.
Link has illustrated two pairs of jeans for Jewel: one with ravens, and the other with wildflowers. She is currently working on a couple of different clothing items, including the dress she was working on when she picked up the phone.
Wildflower jeans illustrated by Kristin Link. Photo by Greg Runyan
In the age of iPhone cameras, why take the time to do an illustration instead of taking a photograph?
“That’s something I think about a lot. There are several things an illustration can do that a photograph can’t,” said Link. In field guides, for example, an artist can illustrate an entire species or capture all the plants and features in a habitat, which would be very difficult to do with a single photograph. And seasons – a single illustration can show a plant in each season, bending time in a way that is much more difficult for photography.
“A field sketch of a landscape has a kind of gestural quality. The artist decided what was important or not important in that scene. Illustration adds a layer of interpretation that affects how someone sees it,” said Link.
Link said she wanted people to know that art is something you can do for fun or as a career or profession.
“You can be an artist, illustrator, or science illustrator - all those options are out there, and it’s something you can do living in rural Alaska.”
For questions or more in- formation on Kristin Link’s work, go to: www.kristin- link.com.
Kristin Link holding her sketch book in the winter. Photo by Kristin Link
Kristin Link’s snow scorpionfly article:
Boreus intermedius: A Potentially Endemic Insect in Kennicott