Bio for Website: We are Irene and Jonas Hastings, an artist couple who met at the Kansas City Art Institute, where we earned B.F.A.s in Illustration. After graduating, marrying, and starting a family, we sought a way to sustain our creative practices alongside regulr jobs and parenting. Embracing digital tools allowed us to integrate art into daily life while preserving the presence of the human hand through a hybrid of traditional and digital processes. Rooted in drawing and painting, our work is inspired by nature, animals, and landscapes, with Jonas also exploring figurative, science fiction, and fantasy themes. Many pieces begin as pen-and-ink studies that are digitally combined, refined, and colored, sometimes using the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Final works are produced as limited-edition archival inkjet prints, with select images translated into hand-pulled silkscreens. Alongside our digital print editions and silkscreens, we actively work in traditional media. Irene explores watercolor and block printing, often blending the two in one-of-a-kind pieces, while Jonas creates expressive pen-and-ink drawings, watercolor paintings, and airbrushed acrylic ink works on wood. Together, we offer a range of limited-edition prints and original artworks that reflect this ongoing dialogue between digital and traditional methods.

Materials and Techniques: The bulk of our work is created through a multi-step process that involves traditional drawing and digital processes. We work in steps, at times generating multiple pen and ink drawings separately before digitally combining them. We then continue to work on the artwork adding color and textures using graphic arts software, including the ipad pro with which we can draw directly into the ipad with the apple pencil, there a whole artwork can be made. The final artwork exists as a digital image. Physical pieces are printed as limited edition digital fine art inkjet prints, which we print ourselves on our 24in wide professional 12 color cannon pro, on archival cotton rag 300gsm, with archival inks. A small selection of prints we created collaborativly and while the process of creating is the same as our inkjet prints, we simplify them further to create hand printed limited edition silkscreen prints. We also incorporate original paintings. Jonas uses airbrush to create fun animal paintings on pine board. We both create small original watercolor paintings and drawings. Framed prints are also part of our offerings. All of the frames we use for our artwork start unfinished and then are customized with paint or stain to compliment the artwork.

Website: http://www.hastings-studio.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/irene.hastingsstudio

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/hastings_studio
https://www.instagrama.com/jonashastingsstudio