ARIE MONROE

Arie was born and raised in the Kansas City area. She started drawing at a very young age. Even then, she was criticized for drawing people with square heads. (She still thinks it makes more sense.) Arie attended high school at Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts. After graduation in 1997, she went on to UMKC to earn a BA in studio art.

Not feeling as if the program there taught her enough to get her a job, she is continued to take art classes around the Kansas City area. Arie started doing caricatures in 1998 at Worlds of Fun. She says, “I love the art of caricature. It is a fun, creative and expressive genre of art. Plus, people actually pay you to make fun of them. Worlds of Fun is a great summer job for any young artist looking for a way to improve their skills. But it is not easy in the beginning. It takes a lot of work to learn how to do it right.”

After about 4 years working as a caricature artist and building her portfolio, Arie decided to attend the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon Graphics in summer 2005 after joining the Kansas City Comic Creator Network where she learned about creating mini comics and what it was like to work in the comics industry. “Creating and reading comics has become a great passion for me. They have created an artistic outlet im my life I never would have imagined."

She is currently in her second year studying animation. She also does freelance illustration, graphic design, and caricatures whenever and wherever she can. In the past year she has worked on such projects as the QB Dolls, a book showcasing the work of the female students at the Kubert school looking to work in comics and animation, Hey Sophie, for Stirred Waters studios, designing characters and doing chapter illustrations.
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Drawlikecrazy and all its contents and art works, unless stated otherwise, are ©Arie Monroe 2006. All rights reserved.