Category: Make Art That Sells
The one question Kendra Binney would love to be asked, plus incredible new work
Today we’d love to share some highlights from Kendra Binney’s portfolio. We’re delighted with how, in such a short period of time, she’s taking off in children’s book illustration and getting loads of card and stationery gigs, among other commissions.
Kendra writes: I’m a nature loving painter, draw-er, pet collecting mess maker. All of my best clothes are covered in dirt, paint, and animal hair.
What’s the strangest work experience you’ve ever had?
I randomly met a woman one time who had tattoos of my artwork completely covering both her arms. There are probably odder experiences, but that one stands out. It was pretty flattering.
What question would you most like to be asked?
“Kendra, can I please clean your house everyday, forever?”
Contact us to assign or license. We’re happy to help!
Animation by Natasha Dewitz
World map commissioned by Oopsy Daisy
Buy it here
This piece was created for my Illustrating Children’s Books course for the double page spread assignment. The text for the course was “A Girl Who Said NO!”, a story about Greta Thunberg written by co-teacher Zoë Tucker.
Kendra submitted this piece for our Global Talent Search and it sealed the deal for representation with us (along with her incredible body of work).
Kendra illustrated this lovely piece for Poses week for my
Illustrating Children’s Book course.
Kendra created this magical and moody piece for Folktale Week.
Various products for Roger LaBorde
Buy them here
Calypso Cards
Buy it here
Original wall art
A beautiful editorial piece by Kendra Binney
Join me! CLASS STARTS MONDAY, OCTOBER 28TH. In this four-week live course, you’ll find out how to get work in this cool and lucrative market, whether you have previous experience or not; what to show on your website or Instagram to get magazine work; how to come up with concepts in your own style; and much more.
The big reveal: See the work our artists created for my recent Illustrating Children’s Book course
Today, we’d love to show you work by our artists that they created for my recent course, Illustrating Children’s Books, which I co-teach online with art director Zoë Tucker. We emphasize the importance of creating a compelling character with “spark”, as Zoë often says, and the artist needs to be able to sustain continuity in the character’s poses. Most of all, the work must have an appealing, unique style appropriate for the text. Check out the work below to see this in action.
Contact us to assign or license–we’re happy to help!
Animation by Natasha Dewitz
How does an artist illustrate Eva Hesse with string and lettering? Lots of lettering by our artists.
Want to see the various ways in which seven top artists create beautiful and brilliant lettering? Read on.
Fun Facts: Did you know that agent Kim Fleming is fluent in French, and agent Joanne Hus is fluent in Spanish? Yup!
Contact us to assign or license–we’re happy to help!
Animation by Natasha Dewitz
“Let’s keep asking questions”
Clairice Gifford’s typographic illustration for Flow Magazine (France)
From the sketchbook of the genius Helen Dardik
Julia’s sketchbook from my MBA course
Lovely serif uppercase lettering from Marenthe’s sketchbook
We love this innovative lettering treatment from Sarah’s book “I Know An Artist” (Quarto)
Trina created delicate serif upper and lower case lettering in this gardening illustration for Baltimore Magazine.
A few of my favorite picks
Today I’m sharing a few of my favorite picks by my artists.
Animation by Anke Rega
Kelly Anne is currently taking my Illustrating Children’s Book course and writes, “Time for another round of Make Art That Sells Illustrating Children’s Books. I chose “Greta & the Wolves”, a wonderful text by co-teacher Zoe Tucker. I can’t wait to dig into the story and Greta’s world over the next four weeks.”
Clairice writes, “I recently did the design for these Fika cookie boxes for Valentine’s Day. So excited to see the actual packaging and is it bad I’m even more excited to eat the cookies. The lettering says ‘many hugs’ in Swedish.”
Click on this image to see a delightful video that Hsinping Pan created for Land of Nod.
Åsa writes, “Here’s a sneak peek of something I’ve been working on. Last year started out very rough but in autumn some amazing things happened. The fabulous Lilla Rogers Studio took me on and I remember telling Lilla that I’d love to illustrate a children’s book. I am so grateful that happened and for getting to work on this beautiful story The Perfect Shelter for Little Tiger Press, coming in the Spring of 2020. Crazy what can happen in a year.”
Bambi writes, “Meet Jack and Pearl… working on my characters for the latest Make Art That Sells kids book class and getting happily swept away by a world of tide pools and ocean goodness. Story by the lovely Zoe Tucker“. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
I hope you enjoyed the show! Want great art for your project? Don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d be delighted to assist you with any of your art needs. Get to know us here!
Follow us on Instagram for more fun.
xo
P. S. Read what our clients have to say about working with our agency here!
BIG NEWS! Plus animated Hank Williams, Susan’s going to NYC, and more!
We love photographing our artists’ illustrated products as they come in. Hope you enjoy them!
ART DIRECTORS: Agent Susan McCabe will be in NYC May 16-19 showing the new artist’s work plus our brand-new collections of available card art and our children’s book portfolio of the very best work. Be sure to contact Susan to schedule a visit. Not in NYC? We’re happy to send you a magazine-style portfolio of the card art or the children’s book art to keep for reference. Just give us a shout.
Animation by Natasha Dewitz
Walter Foster Publishing
Greeting Card for Sellers Publishing
Puzzle to Go for Mudpuppy
Greeting cards for Trader Joe’s
Greeting cards for Madison Park (left) and Sellers Publishing (right)
Great spots in Better Homes & Gardens “Do It Yourself” Magazine
See our artists’ work for my Bootcamp course + Semester of Art School on SALE today
As you may know, I’ve loved teaching for over 40 years–at art schools, in my Studio, mentoring my artists, and for the past six years, on my site Make Art That Sells. I’m at the stage in my career where I want to help our community. I believe that growing the quality of work in our industry energizes everyone and creates prosperity for all–artists, agents, art directors, manufacturers…
Animation by Natasha Dewitz
Get some of this goodness for yourself and sign up now!
What happens when our artists go rogue on home décor art?
Check out some of the amazing artwork our artists created for Home Décor, revealed initially in our exclusive Menagerie showcase.
Registration for Bootcamp–Lilla’s most popular course–reopens for a limited time starting TOMORROW, February 26th, and closes for good on Friday. Don’t miss out!
February Bootcamp’s assignment was to create a floral journal cover. Artists were given a particular flower, a medium, and an on-trend palette to play with. Here’s the gorgeous work produced by some of our artists, available for license.
Who will be our next represented artist? Announcing the 2018 GTS Finalists!
Announcing the 2018 GTS Finalists
The judges and the people have spoken! The competition was intense, with judges telling us that it was challenging to select a mere five artists from such an incredible pool of work.
We’re delighted to now reveal the 2018 Global Talent Search Finalists, chosen from the 50 Semi-Finalists (who were selected from over 1,200 artists’ work).
Five artists were chosen by our panel of VIP industry experts, and one was chosen by public vote (our People’s Choice Winner).
The overall competition winner will be represented by Lilla Rogers Studio and will be flown from their home city to our Artists and VIP Retreat in September!
Click here to view the Finalists!
Over 10,000 votes were cast by the public, and we can now reveal that the 2018 Global Talent Search People’s Choice Finalist is. See the People’s Choice Finalist here.
Read the next steps in the competition here.
Finalist 1 (The People’s Choice and Judge’s choice): Åsa Gilland, Sweden
MATS Student since 2014
The People’s Choice Finalist Åsa was also one of the five Finalists chosen by the judges. As per our rules, this allowed the judges’ sixth choice to also join the group of Finalists, and we are delighted with our top six, who will now take on one more assignment to try to win the title of Lilla Rogers Studio Global Talent Search Winner 2018.
Here’s what one of our GTS judges had to say about Åsa’s GTS submission:
‘I love her style – it is loose and organic yet detailed. Her people have personality and unique looks. I like that she did not format this piece in little blocks like so many others.’
Finalist 2: Jennifer Potter, San Francisco, California
MATS Student since 2017
Here’s what one of our GTS judges had to say about Jennifer’s GTS submission:
‘Jennifer Potter: great layout, smart inclusion of the hands, theme tied into every element, including the rope frames. Love the limited palette. In an instant, I knew this was about a few people, a boat, and was from the past. Great skills in scenes, people, and objects.’
Finalist 3: Kendra Binney, Portland, Oregon
MATS Student since 2014
Here’s what one of our GTS judges had to say about Kendra’s GTS submission:
‘Kendra Binney’s Birdsong was a standout. I loved it from first glance before I even began reading. The art is really striking and appealing and fresh, the color use is lovely, and the storytelling is superb.’
Finalist 4: Sarah Papworth, West Midlands, United Kingdom
MATS Student since 2015
Here’s what one of our GTS judges had to say about Sarah’s GTS submission:
‘Her journal took my breath away, and this assignment was amazing. The lettering. the tonal quality, the details, the story. But most of ALL, it’s her vast portfolio that has such differentiation within it. Her piece has style, finesse, variety, great lettering, and solid talent.’
Finalist 5: Anke Rega, Berlin, Germany
MATS Student since 2016
Here’s what one of our GTS judges had to say about Anke’s GTS submission:
‘The color palette is very appealing and the way she decorated the interior showed that she’s tapped into trends.’
Finalist 6: Julia Christians, The Harz Mountains, Germany
MATS Student since 2017
Here’s what one of our GTS judges had to say about Julia’s GTS submission:
‘I want to work with her! What else can I say? I like the energy in her work, the humour in her characters. She would work for picture books and middle-grade fiction.’
To all those that participated in the competition this year, a big giant THANK YOU for being a part of it!
Stay tuned to find out who will win the competition!
The 2018 Global Talent Search winner will be announced on lillarogers.com on August 17th!
What happens when my artists take my class? See why I love these two.
Here’s what happens when my artists (many of whom are my e-course grads) take my course Assignment Bootcamp. This work was from the January assignment where I asked the students to draw what they imagine might be in the bag of one of 12 badass women. Then they were to turn it into a book cover. Just for fun, students got assigned their person to illustrate based on the student’s birthday month. (By the way, you can still get into this lively class for the next 4 months of assignments and other goodness, but registration closes tonight, so hurry!)
This is a very exciting new look for my artist Zoe Ingram. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Zoe do portraits quite like this so I was delighted to see her thoughtful rendering of Maira Kalman, the iconic illustrator.
Follow us on Instagram for more fun.
Hope you enjoyed the show!
Don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to hear from you for any of your art needs.
Zoe’s home decor pitch for you
So when I take on an artist, they get to have free access to all my online courses at Make Art That Sells. It’s a great way that they can keep growing, learning, and making new work for us to show.
This is what happens when my artist Zoe Ingram, my very first Global Talent Search winner,took my home decor course recently. These are based on my trend boards that I provide in class.
Get a napkin ready because you are about to drool. And contact us to snap these designs up for your products. Many are still available. Or Zoe is happy to do commissions for you.
Hope you enjoyed the show. Lookin’ for some great art? Contact us to license, buy or commission art for your fabulous project. We are happy to help you!
XO
Lilla
