Lela's more than 30 years of art experience in the field of fantasy, humor and science fiction contributes to the success of numberous games, comics, and other products.      Lela was born in Southern California and raised by parents (both teachers) who loved the outdoors, good books, humor, and occasional poetry, and her artwork tends to reflect those things. She began drawing as soon as she could hold a pencil -- painting, creating things out of clay, fabric, beads, or seed pods and twigs. And since she was a sickly child she put in hours of practice with pencil and paper to keep entertained. Her father kept her well supplied with paper during the brief period that he taught printmaking at a local school.      She has over 30 years of experience creating artwork specifically for the field of fantasy and science fiction, starting with West Coast sci/fi and fantasy convention art shows. Her detailed pen and ink, pencil and watercolor illustrations still reveal traces of early influence by the English Illustrator Arthur Rackham, and her cartoons were certainly molded by Walt Kelly’s comic strip 'Pogo'. Lela received her AA degree in Commercial Art from Foothill College and after one more illustration class at San Jose State University she embarked upon a career as a freelance artist. (Despite the many dire warnings given by former teachers that “one simply couldn’t make a living freelancing“... they were partly right!)      Her earlier and better-known work include a set of four portfolios with dragon and unicorn themes published by Schanes & Schanes. Shortly thereafter she began working in the comic book industry, primarily on two bimonthly black & white titles for Eclipse Comics; 'The Dreamery', for which she did a cartoon rendition of 'Alice Through the Looking Glass', and 'Fusion', a tongue-in-cheek science fiction fantasy --splitting the art chores with artist Steve Gallacci. A humorous spin-off of one of the back-up stories in 'Fusion' was ‘The Weasel Patrol', a collaboration with former husband Ken Macklin. It gained attention from Nickelodeon and nearly became a Saturday morning cartoon series. Lela also drew the layouts and finished pencils on a three-part graphic novel rendition of 'Dragonflight'.        Like many other artists left high and dry by the collapse of the comic book market, she eventually ventured into (or, more to the point, was dragged kicking and screaming) the then fledgling computer games industry. After a crash course in computer animation she worked fulltime for LucasArts doing 2D cartoon character animation for their critically acclaimed PC game 'Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle', and 'Sam & Max Hit the Road'. She later freelanced for other computer game companies as well.      Primarily a freelance commercial conceptual illustrator now, Lela works on projects that involve cartooning, character or toy designs, logo design and book or magazine illustration. She often works through different art studios collaborating on layouts, conceptual art or storyboards. Some of her past clients include Hasbro, Mattel, Electronic Arts, Totally Games, Big Ape Productions, Leapfrog, Ladybug, Yahoo! and XCOR. She still occasionally displays and sells her fine art and prints at sci-fi & fantasy convention art shows around the country.      Lela lives in the Santa Cruz mountains in Northern California with her fiancé and works primarily through Lightsource Studios in San Jose. Visit their website at www.lightsourcestudios.com. She also does a weekly newspaper editorial cartoon for the ‘Novato Advance’.   All art on this site © Lela Dowling ~ No uses of these images allowed without artist's permission ~ Email Lela ~ Lela Dowling - 2042 Casa Mia Drive - San Jose, CA 95124