Portfolio Review: McKay Felt Shares Curious Characters From His Unforgettable Illustrations

"This one was a small painting that tried to represent my ever-present cognitive dissonance. I assume other people have it too..."

"I drew this from a photo shoot I went to with Meghan Giboin. This was the only life drawing that wasn't scribbles from the 15-second poses. I love the anatomy of people, and I was really into how the foot was curled against the floor. "

"I draw a version of this shadow thingy at the end of all my sketchbooks. It means, 'finished' in Japanese. I feel like it caps the book of nice because it gives me the impression that something metaphysical or mystic has just ended, kind of like a story but with incongruent drawings."

"This one is of myself drawing and a ghost exiting my mouth. I don't know how to really explain this one because I don't think I've quite figured it all out yet."

"This is a pillar that I drew live on for Denik at the Agenda Show Las Vegas 2013. I drew it with Sharpie. I made it up as I went, and I think you can find something new hidden in it every time you look at it. This was tons of fun to draw, and I met a lot of really cool people during it too."

"This desk was a lot of fun to paint because I wanted to work with symbols and more stereotypical 'feminine' colors. I want to leave this one open to interpretation as I think different people will get a different meaning out of it. This desk and the black one were both painted for a gallery I was in last July."

"This dude is getting claustrophobic. I wanted these two desks to be like relatively elaborate paintings a student might do in High School when they're bored, so you can sit in the desk and imagine yourself in the situation."

"I'm playing with this guy as a character for a potential short story I want to draw. It's all really tentative right now, and I haven't had time to devote to it yet."

"There's this really rad photograph set by Dave Miami of King Krule and I really wanted to draw one of them and put my take on it. That kid's face's angles are so interesting. There's a bleak, haunting quality to his voice that I attempted to incorporate into the drawing."

"This one actually has a funny story (to me) behind it. My wife and I were cleaning our place, and I found one of her hair bands and put it on and tied up my shirt, and we I thought I looked like a '50s cleaning lady. I don't smoke, but I had a pen that looked like a cigarette and it just topped it off. So naturally I decided to draw myself as a cleaning lady."

"To be honest, this was just barely finished for a group project I was doing for university. I drew the top three (Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and The Gaslamp Killer) and my friend/ fellow student Alfie Pietroni drew the bottom five (Jeremiah Jae, TOKiMONSTA, Mono/Poly, Lorn, and Captain Murphy). I'm currently in London right now to finish studying at UAL. The idea of the project was to make a box set for a record label. As you can see, Brainfeeder was the label I chose for my group. This was a poster included the set. "

"I painted my best friend for this piece. It was also for the same art show that I painted the desks for. This piece was painted on a seat I had removed from a desk and is made to hang on a wall. I loved painting it on the wood. I used acrylic, ink, color pencil, and water color for it. This one is also one of those open interpretation pieces."