While some of us have led rich fantasy lives, Chicago-based illustrator Cynthia Cummens draws them. Before she became one of the latest illustrators asked to create one-of-a-kind art for the Topps
Star Wars Artist Sketch Cards series, Cummens was drawing portraits of fantastical people in her own galaxy, not so far away.
"I was struck with the idea to be a portrait artist at the Bristol Renaissance Fair, having always had an interest in portraiture," Cummens says. "In 2000 and 2001, I had a shop there during the summer, and it actually served as a nice transition into freelance illustration. I did 'quick sketches,' likenesses not caricatures, of young people, children, some toddlers even, old folks and even cast members in costume. It was an exciting place, filled with performers and artists of all types and I admit to thoroughly enjoying the escapism into a fantasy world each weekend, which probably originated in me after seeing
Star Wars as a kid!" Ironically enough, instead of the young Cummens begging her parents to see
A New Hope in the theater, it was her mother who made certain her young daughter was in the seat right next to her watching the opening scrawl.
"My first Star Wars memory is of my mom being completely excited after seeing it and not giving me much choice about going back to the theater to see it with her," Cummens remembers. " She just kept saying, 'You're going to love this movie!' Afterwards, I remember leaving the theater with a huge crush on Han Solo!"
It was this crush that inspired her to draw in the first place, even after she suffered a crushing blow that would keep most budding artists from picking up a crayon.
"Around the age of 12, I broke my right arm," Cummens recalls. "It was a pretty bad break and I had to wear a cast for three months. I had been drawing since age 3 but during that time, I focused on it really intensely. I taught myself to draw with my left hand, not my dominant hand. But I was so determined! At the end of 3 months, I had drawn dozens of
Star Wars drawings all left-handed, and was so proud of them that I displayed them on my wall in construction paper frames and invited friends to see them -- sort of like a gallery opening! I think that might have been the beginning of artistic career and didn't know it."
Eagerly continuing her art training through high school, Cummens eventually attended Columbia College Chicago where she received a degree in Fine Art with a major in Painting. After spending a few years selling her oil paintings in galleries and coffeehouses around Chicago, Cummens realized she wanted to follow a different artistic path. In 1999, she packed up her large canvases and decided to pursue illustration.
"As an illustrator, my first published piece was an illustration I did for a nationally televised Christmas special for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America which aired on CBS in 2001," Cummens reveals. "The illustration, a nativity scene, was used in the opening segment of the Christmas special with an animation of the title graphics. It was also used for a print ad in
The Chicago Tribune and on a huge billboard along a highway in Chicago."
But it was while working as an sketch artist at the Bristol Renaissance Fair where she met a group of Star Wars fans who told her of a different kind of convention she should attend.
"While I was working at the Renaissance Faire one day, a fellow Star Wars fan told me about Celebration II, which was coming up the following year," Cummens says. "I couldn't have been more excited and made it a definite must to go as well as visit the art room and talk to the artists there. I was quite nervous, actually, but they were really friendly and willing to talk about their own experiences as Star Wars artists."
