Hello, young artists, wherever you are

"The worst thing you can do as a young artist is convince yourself you’re not good enough yet, and that no one wants to talk to you. If you avoid those conventions, those Society of Illustrators events, those show openings and chatrooms and calls for entries, all you’re doing is hobbling yourself."
-Jenna Kass

Recently I went to a SCBWI "meet and greet" at Chronicle Books. Basically Chronicle opened up their super hip urban-lofts San Francisco office to SCBWI members for evening drinks and hors d'oeuvres. I brought along my portfolio and a handful of business cards.

"Was it fun?" my children's book teacher asked me the next day.

"Honestly, no," I said. "But I didn't expect it to be." See, I am not good making small talk with strangers. I can give speeches and oral presentations and stuff, but when it comes to just chatting with new people my mind goes blank and there are all these awkward silences in the conversation where all I can think of is "saysomethingKelleysaysomethingKelleysaysomethingKelley." But I made myself go to the meet-and-greet for some much-needed practice. I wore my favorite squirrel shirt for added confidence.

It was loud and crowded and very warm, and aspiring authors and illustrators hounded the Chronicle employees like hungry piranhas. Seriously, they were surprisingly aggressive. I did manage to put my postcard into the hand of a the middle-grade/YA editor. That was my big achievement of the night. 

Was it fun? Not really, but I was still grateful for the opportunity. I'm going to get better at this.

Summer Evening

Just a little something from my Adv. Perspective class.

This is so lame

I've had sort of a girl-crush on Aubrey Plaza lately. In this illustration I basically transformed her into a teenage girl who is forced to participate in a totally cheesy and lame magic show.

I took my own photo references for this. Yes, I can transform from a girl wearing a blanket and holding a toothbrush to an old magician guy. I'm amazing like that.

Here is a step-by-step breakdown of the process.

I like coffee mugs

Recently I discussed how much I love tea. The post went viral and became a huge sensation around the internet. Ok fine it didn't, but I'm going to keep talking anyway. Not surprisingly, I love coffee mugs almost as much as I love tea. The picture above is my current collection. In the past I've gone for a red-and-white theme, but there are so many interesting coffee mugs on Etsy that I'm thinking of breaking that pattern.

Owl golden moon by madrab

Geometric prism by TaylorTwoShop

Vintage 1960's coffee cups by whipowill

Geometric triangle mug by Asleepfromday

Black and white coffee mug by trinako

Black birds in teal by Rosslab

Green ceramic cup by stephaniekan

Piero Fornasetti Milano Architecture 1960's coffee cups by barkingsandsvintage

Sunshine Portrait

International orders are always a treat for me. This client, who lives in Australia, wanted a portrait of her lovely daughter.

She sent me this photo, then ordered a 9x12 sized portrait from my Etsy shop. I sent her scans of the drawing in progress. I left out the flower pattern on her shirt because I thought it would be too distracting, and put a lot of time into making sure that her long hair looked smooth and shiny.

After receiving the portrait, the client said "I've shown your portrait to people as they visit the house and everyone has been so positive."

Before the Flood

Some homework from perspective class. The theme was "Noah's Ark." While many of my classmates drew futuristic, sci-fi arks, I went with a pretty traditional Bible story setting. I wanted to feature the little boy and girl characters I drew from a previous piece called "After the Flood."

Let's Go, Hugo!

Believe it or not, out of five attempts, this is the best photo I could get of my teacher and I. I guess we're not very photogenic.

Yesterday my professor Angela Dominguez released her newest book, "Let's Go, Hugo!" This is the first book that she has both written and illustrated. Many of her students showed up to the book release party at Books Inc in San Francisco to get our copies signed. Because many of us saw the book while it was still in black-and-white-sketches, we were excited to see the final product. As my friend Shirong said, it's like Angela just had a baby! A book baby!

I like "Let's Go, Hugo!" because it is about facing your fears. It's about how making excuses to hide your fears will eventually affect your relationships. But all of these heavy-sounding themes are presented in a charming style with cute bird characters and a Parisian setting. Go read it now.

In the SCBWI bulletin!

One of my spot illustrations made it into this month's SCBWI bulletin! If you have a copy, it's on page 33.

This drawing was inspired by my little brother Chris, who dressed up as George Washington for Halloween one year.

Daughter portrait

This is a 9x12 pencil portrait I finished recently for an Etsy customer. This lovely young lady is headed off to college this year, so her father ordered this special portrait of her.

It was kind of crazy - the customer just happened to live within walking distance of my childhood home. At first I thought that he must be a friend of a friend or something - but nope! He just happened upon my Etsy shop through the ol' Google. So cool!

"Imagination" featured at Deviantart

I drew this self-portrait for a scholarship contest about two years ago. Now I see a lot of problems with my painting techniques here, but I still like the concept. It really sums me up pretty succinctly. It feels very Kelley. It also feels kind of Lisa Frank, which...makes sense, I guess. It never occurred to me to list her as one of my artistic influences, but maybe I should.

Today Deviantart featured this piece on their blog, as part of a post grandly titled "The Rise of the Artist." It's basically about how technology will never be able to replace creativity, and so creatives are uniquely poised to flourish in the upcoming century. Deviantart also posted it on their Facebook page to represent the "art" side of a discussion about whether people should study art or programming. Kind of a silly non-dilemma, in my opinion. As I have learned from my programmer husband, coding also requires creativity and can be an art in its own way.

So I got a lot of attention on Deviantart today and I'm thankful for the feature, all the new favorites and new watchers.