Beautiful Digital Paintings by Artist Kathy Grillo

My name is Kathy Hartwig Grillo and I am an artist and illustrator from Michigan. Though I do experiment with various mediums I currently am doing mostly digital art.

I specialize in custom pet portraits and custom fashion illustrations. I also enjoy painting and drawing things from nature. Flowers, old gnarly trees, Old houses and buildings, I like to get into the tiny details.

After many years of putting aside my dream, I am finally beginning to put myself and my art out into the world. It has been a long journey to get here.

I have always been creative and can remember trying to draw my friends in grade school. I always looked for all the art and creative classes I could take.

In High School, I was part of an amazing advanced art class full of incredible talent. Though it was inspiring it was also intimidating as my class won every prize out there. I was honored to have won several gold key awards from the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cleveland State University art exhibits. I had a dream to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art but could not afford tuition and honestly was scared of the rejection. I instead worked to take classes at the community college. But as we know life happens.

I got married and had 3 children, a house, a husband and a dog and there really was not much time, space or money for my art. I did not do much of anything creative for about 20 years.

As my children grew older and more independent I had more time to dream again. I was out shopping one day and on a whim bought a sketchbook and a pencil set and started drawing. I haven’t stopped.

The sketching eventually led to an interest in painting. I saw some digital art on a livestream and thought it was a great way to paint without taking up space and waste. Little did I know that Christmas I would receive a tablet and painting program. I immediately started teaching myself by reading the manual and experimenting.
I actually paint digitally basically like I would paint traditionally, not using a lot of computer intervention. My canvas is just a monitor screen. So I transitioned rather easily.

Though my online art community and live streaming my creations. I was encouraged to put my art out into the world and have been creating this new life now of being an artist for the last several years. I am finally living that dream from long ago. I now dream of creating and sharing my art for the rest of my life! I also hope to be a wonderful example of it never being too late to follow a dream.

Bengal cat digital painting by Kathy Grillo Bengal Cat