Latest / The Starfish Storytellers / Episode 4: Visual Journeys through Art and Book Illustration: Telling a Timeless Story with Colleen Sgroi

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Episode 4: Visual Journeys through Art and Book Illustration: Telling a Timeless Story with Colleen Sgroi · The Starfish Storytellers

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Starfish Storytellers, the podcast that makes a difference one story at a time by bringing storytelling to life.
• 0:14
  I started thinking about stories and the stories that we tell ourselves.
• 0:21
  And so how stories can sometimes propel us and sometimes they can entangle us from moving forward.
• 0:36
  For years I had done folk art and started in the 80s and moved to Florida and was doing folk art painting and loved it.
• 0:50
  And kind of got known for that and then a publisher from New York started publishing my work.
• 0:57
  And it was all very exciting and my work was being sold all over the world and that was my thing.
• 1:05
  I was the folk artist. And I ended up moving to Virginia and then back home.
• 1:12
  And when I moved back home I got involved in my hometown, Bill Rica, and I did some folk art paintings and started teaching classes in my home.
• 1:25
  And then I was known as the folk artist from Bill Rica.
• 1:29
  And secretly deep down inside I always wanted to learn watercolors but there was just never an opportunity for me to learn it because I used oils and acrylics.
• 1:42
  So I just kept going on with my folk art and doing more and more folk art paintings and turning them into prints and selling them and becoming pretty successful doing it.
• 1:55
  And then I opened up a gallery and the big sign was calling for folk art.
• 2:01
  And then one of my teachers at my art center was teaching a watercolor class so I decided to take the watercolor class.
• 2:11
  And in that watercolor class there was a freedom that I found in painting that was very different than the way I was painting that was tight and detailed and stuff.
• 2:25
  And there was just something inside of me that I could tell was trying to break out but there was another part of me that was like, but I can't because everybody loves my folk art and I'm a folk artist.
• 2:38
  And I always thought this is what you have to do. You have to stay in a lane and focus on that.
• 2:46
  And that's what you become famous for or well known for and people collect you.
• 2:52
  But there was another part of me that was like, but I want to explore and I want to do something.
• 2:58
  And that was that artist inside of me that's always curious and always wants to create.
• 3:04
  I kind of came up with my own way of teaching watercolors and so I started teaching it and the more I taught it the more I was painting with it and the more freer I became.
• 3:15
  And I kept going back thinking, oh I need to stay in my lane, you know, but then I was really enjoying the watercolor.
• 3:24
  And then because somebody contacted me and wanted me to work on a children's book for them, watercolors was definitely an easier route to go because it's faster and it just lends itself to that.
• 3:38
  So all of a sudden I was a book illustrator and I started winning prizes for the books that I won and I won a best illustrator award.
• 3:51
  And we went to an award ceremony for it and I started realizing that we can change lanes.
• 4:01
  We can change our story and that we don't need to hold on.
• 4:05
  And I didn't know what I was going to do as I was getting older with my art center and gallery because I mean I had it for 18 years.
• 4:15
  That was a pretty long run for somebody that was an artist, you know, keeping the place open because I would see them open and close and open and close.
• 4:25
  I love my students. I can't let go, you know, and it's again my story, you know, and then I, COVID happened.
• 4:36
  And it just forced me to change my story and I had to shut down. And when I shut down, I felt the biggest sense of relief.
• 4:50
  And I just was like, oh my God, I can work at my home. I can do whatever I want.
• 4:58
  And then I started teaching classes online because there was nothing else to do. I filmed my class and now I teach people all over the country and in Canada and Florida and all kinds of places.
• 5:13
  And again, my story changed and I realized as the older I get that our stories are just that. They're stories and they're not meant to hold us back.
• 5:33
  They're meant to tell the story and be inspired and then what's the next thing, you know?
• 5:43
  And so I guess I want to say to the audience, how is your story holding you back?
• 6:04
  Hello.
• 6:05
  My name is Liana Henry and welcome to the Starfish Storytellers. I'm the CEO of the Black Dog Group, a Marcom and project management firm headquartered on the East Coast of the U.S. in quaint colonial Bedford, Massachusetts.
• 6:17
  I'm your host and passionate about storytelling and I'm actually on a mission to raise up the next generation of storytellers.
• 6:24
  We've named ourselves the Starfish Storytellers after the Starfish story.
• 6:28
  The moral of the Starfish story is based on the power of one. No matter how big the challenge, each action we take makes a difference and has an impact.
• 6:37
  One step, one starfish or one story at a time.
• 6:40
  Every episode we welcome a new storyteller who will share their story meant to inspire and connect with you.
• 6:46
  Then we'll break it down and offer tips for any listeners who are ready to tell their own stories.
• 6:51
  So thanks for tuning in. Now let's get started.
• 6:55
  Today's episode is about visual journeys through art and book illustration and telling a timeless story.
• 7:02
  With me today is artist and award winning children's book illustrator and my friend Colleen Scroy.
• 7:09
  Colleen has an art studio where she holds online watercolor classes and has illustrated a number of children's books.
• 7:15
  Welcome to the show, Colleen. Hi. Glad to be here.
• 7:19
  So you just shared a really powerful story, your story with us, and you challenged our listeners to really look at where does their story hold them back
• 7:32
  and how you kind of mapped through all of the changes that you went through with your art and sort of the evolution of your art.
• 7:41
  And now you're in a place where you're doing it's almost like you doing the online watercolor classes.
• 7:50
  Like it was cool before it was cool.
• 7:52
  Like you're doing you started doing it before everybody had to do it because of covid.
• 7:56
  You were already starting to really look at that and really perfect that.
• 8:00
  I will say based on what you just said that like at least two or three years before I even closed my gallery before covid even hit,
• 8:13
  I had thought about doing online to add to what I was already doing and so that I could reach more people.
• 8:23
  And I just thought that financially that it would be a better way to kind of add to my repertoire or whatever.
• 8:34
  And and so I took I literally paid for a course to take and I was taking the course in the middle of taking the course.
• 8:47
  I got my first book deal and so I kind of put the course aside and started doing this book with the first author that I worked with the NBs.
• 9:01
  And it was called Worry Bee.
• 9:04
  And I had such an amazing experience with her doing this book.
• 9:11
  She was like, let's do another one. And then immediately we went into Mindful Moon.
• 9:18
  And with the first book, she went back and forth, back and forth.
• 9:22
  OK, you draw the picture, then you show me the second book.
• 9:26
  She had come to this place where she totally trusted me and trusted in my ability and my art and my my way to just enter into a place of being creative that she just said,
• 9:42
  here's the story. Just do your thing. Do what you envision.
• 9:49
  And she was definitely one of those persons that just begin to trust me and just be like, go ahead, do it.
• 9:58
  And because she did that, it enabled me.
• 10:03
  She like took her hands off it and it enabled me to do.
• 10:07
  She did her part of it and then it enabled me to do my part of it.
• 10:11
  And it was probably the most inspirational book that I've done thus thus far.
• 10:18
  And then she put it in for this Moonbeam Award.
• 10:22
  And she kept saying right from the beginning, she goes, we're going to win a Moonbeam Award for this because of your illustrations.
• 10:28
  And I'd be like, OK, you know, and I'm not highly competitive and I don't I don't even like to go to art shows where there's judges like that.
• 10:37
  It's just like because it's so subject to whoever the judge is.
• 10:41
  Right. Right. So I just am just like, do your thing like and be good at it, you know,
• 10:47
  and just be inspired. And so we won and we won for best illustrator.
• 10:53
  And that really affirmed to me not that it was a big deal to win a prize,
• 11:00
  but for me, it affirmed that place of.
• 11:05
  You got to go into that zone as an artist and just let the creativity come on you and just flow through you.
• 11:13
  So, yeah, anyway. Yeah, I had I was reading that about children's books and illustration.
• 11:21
  And I read this quote and it said a children's book illustrator designs the pictures and artwork that not only add visual accompaniment to the story,
• 11:31
  but they also help children better understand what it is that they're reading by creating meaningful images that are going to bring that book to life.
• 11:40
  And so you just talked about sort of letting that creativity flow and really kind of going into that place inside of you where that story lives and how you kind of make it come to life.
• 11:52
  Is that hard to do?
• 11:56
  It depends.
• 11:59
  Some books, I have to say, are easier than others.
• 12:03
  And who you're working with can be make it easier like who whoever the artist is.
• 12:13
  I mean, the author is who you're working with because they're all self-published people.
• 12:17
  That's who I work with. And so that has a lot to do with it, whether they give you freedom to to allow that to flow through you or,
• 12:30
  for example, the same woman I'm working on an adult book right now.
• 12:36
  And it's a journal. And it I'm feeling the same way as I did it with Mindful Moon.
• 12:43
  And, you know, she every time I send her a new chapter with because the whole thing is covered with just ethereal looking watercolors and different things to describe how people can write in a journal to go.
• 12:57
  She does these retreats. And I feel the same way because I just feel this like just do your thing just gives me the freedom who I'm working with can make a difference.
• 13:11
  And then there's always new challenges. The last children's book I did. Are you a bird like me?
• 13:18
  I had to come up with four different characters. You know, a squirrel, a bird, a giraffe and a butterfly and have them make facial expressions that express how they felt in the moment and all of that.
• 13:37
  And, you know, those are challenges because I hadn't done those kind of animals before.
• 13:44
  What was your what was your inspiration for the facial expressions was like did you look in a mirror and make the expressions was it like the face of like one of your grandkids?
• 13:52
  No, I would look up other cartoons and find like facial expressions for a bird, you know, and it's like, oh, they need to have an eyebrow.
• 14:05
  Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, or squirrels, you know, like see what other artists do. And I think that that's invaluable.
• 14:17
  You know, we all inspire each other to do things. But then when you when you do it, it comes out different. It looks completely different.
• 14:27
  So I kind of create like a Pinterest page, like a storyboard. And I as soon as I get the script, I'm just like plopping things in there like, oh, show me squirrels, show me birds, show me this, you know, and then I kind of come up with my own version of how I can do that.
• 14:46
  And now is that how the information comes to you? Do you get like a like a book brief or like a manuscript or or just an outline like like because I'm in a bad story. I so they already have written the story.
• 14:59
  Okay. Yeah, there is this one person that gave me a deposit last year. And she every time I talk to her, she's kind of like, well, can you just do a bus with kids on it so we can see? And I'm like, you need to give me your story.
• 15:18
  I don't have a story. I can't get a vision for this whole book without seeing what it's about. So it's definitely the story. You know, a word, you know, like when I'm doing a painting, I think of a word or I think about what is the feeling I want to portray here, you know, do I want drama?
• 15:39
  Do I want happiness? Do I want love? Do I you know, like, sometimes it's just a word for me, you know, and then I let that kind of flow through me and into the work. It's the same with doing a book.
• 15:52
  You know, it's driven by the author's story. And, you know, when Anne and I would go to schools, which we do sometimes, it's so interesting because they would break up the school group to come see us and it would be like the kindergarten through second grade, and then third through fifth.
• 16:16
  And always the kindergarten to second grade wanted to ask me questions and the older kids wanted to ask her questions. And it's because of what you just said.
• 16:29
  It's so driven by the pictures when they're younger, because they can't read yet. Right. So they have to see the visual and to understand the story. And that's what makes them remember.
• 16:42
  I mean, if you think about, you know, a Dr. Seuss book that maybe you read when you were a kid, you know, seeing before you even knew how to read.
• 16:52
  When I look at those pictures, I remember everything about the pictures like the dog sleeping under the bed and the moonlight, the way it came in the window.
• 17:03
  And you know what I mean? The hat. Do you like my hat? No, I do not like your hat. You know what I mean? I just remember the visual of it because, well, one, I'm a visual person.
• 17:15
  But also it's because it was when I was little and I couldn't read yet.
• 17:20
  You know, looking at some of the folk art parts that you've done, I was curious when you, because they're very, very intricate.
• 17:30
  There's a lot of detail. I mean, I don't even know how you get some of that detail so tiny on those paintings.
• 17:37
  I know that sometimes you're commissioned, but for paintings that maybe you weren't commissioned for that you did anyway, like how did those images come to pass?
• 17:45
  Like I've seen a lot of your art. I have some of your art and I've seen some of like sort of the colonial scenes, like maybe a big parade where there's a lot of colonial houses and people.
• 17:56
  And is it when you when you think about the storyline for it, is it that you create one element and then the painting comes from there?
• 18:04
  Or you have this whole storyline already in your mind and you're just kind of plugging in all the elements into the painting?
• 18:12
  Well, of course, every painting is different in why am I doing it? And, you know, is like you said, is it a commission? Is it an actual place?
• 18:23
  And then you build around that actual place, you know, like the Whiffle Tree or, you know, Concord Center or different paintings that I've done.
• 18:34
  The Orchard House, you know, so there's different places like if I'm doing them and I'm doing them on my own, you know, but then I remember one day I got a vision of in my mind
• 18:49
  and it kept coming to me over and over again about and it came from this tea bag, you know, and it was an Emerson quote about how a forest comes from one acorn.
• 19:06
  I forget exactly what the quote was and I kept I kept the tea bag because I could picture this whole forest above and then an intricate thing of like roots underneath.
• 19:22
  And I didn't do it for a while, but it just was one of those things where it's like, you know what, I'm just going to do it.
• 19:28
  And so and and then I taped the tea bag thing to the back of the painting and somebody in an art show in Lexington bought the painting because it meant something to them.
• 19:42
  But that was that was an example of a painting that came in an unusual kind of a way that I just went, what the heck, I'm just going to do it.
• 19:51
  You know, it was very different. Sometimes just if it's just a little winter scene, I pull from my past.
• 19:58
  I pull from, well, what did I do as a kid when I was out in the snow? Right.
• 20:03
  I skated, I, you know, had hot cocoa. I, you know, and so I remember one painting I did.
• 20:12
  It was called something cranberry or something like that. It was part of a four season set that I had.
• 20:22
  But it was it all started from a memory of when I was kids that we used to skate on this cranberry bog in Wilmington.
• 20:30
  So there was with folk art, there was a lot of nostalgia of, you know, pulling on memory.
• 20:38
  A lot of times I just, you know, any of the Bill Rick of folk art, you know, of center home homecoming, you know, as I was painting it, I'm like,
• 20:48
  why am I just putting just random people in here? I need to put people in from Bill Rick.
• 20:53
  You know, and then I've been in it like three or four times, you know, like when I was a kid, you know, when I was a teenager, things that I did as a teenager, you know,
• 21:02
  my two of my kids did mime when we were in Williamsburg. And so I put them as mimes on the street.
• 21:09
  You know, we had when we were little, the rec department had different things going on.
• 21:15
  They come into your neighborhood and do different things. And we had a doll carriage parade.
• 21:19
  So I looked up the picture of my sisters in the doll carriage parade with other ones and I put them in and just exactly how they were dressed, you know.
• 21:28
  And so I don't know. I just kind of had fun with it, you know, and then every Bill Rick painting, I put my family in there.
• 21:37
  I have the Sexton House painting on my wall that we used as a cover for the magazine, the Bill Rick of Green magazine.
• 21:45
  And the sled, I think, is your family in the sleigh. Yeah.
• 21:50
  And, you know, most people won't know that, but I know it. Yeah. I'm just having fun with it because it's me, you know, and it's a little part of me that goes with it.
• 22:00
  Yeah. Yeah. So every every episode, we try to talk a little bit about the types of stories.
• 22:05
  And so the types of stories that you create are visual stories and visual stories are very powerful.
• 22:12
  We live in such an era, in a society that our attention span is so fragmented that so often we get so much more from a visual, from an illustration, from a painting, from a picture.
• 22:26
  And we can package our story that way in a very simple way, especially with children's books.
• 22:31
  You know, the image is everything for a young child.
• 22:35
  But I like to also ask our guests, you know, for our listeners, if there's someone out there who wants to get started as an artist taking our classes or somebody out there who has a story and wants to be an illustrator, you know, what advice might you give them to get started?
• 22:56
  That's a good question.
• 23:01
  I would say don't undersell yourself.
• 23:05
  Write up your quote.
• 23:08
  Say, spell out everything that you will do.
• 23:12
  And there's power in that and this freedom in it.
• 23:18
  Because when you get that out of the way, you're free to be creative.
• 23:23
  Because you're not thinking about, oh, are they going to still pay me that amount or da da da da da, you know.
• 23:32
  It sounds like a silly thing because it doesn't sound like the creative part of the thing.
• 23:38
  But I would say if, if you're going to do it and there's plenty of opportunities.
• 23:46
  So I would say do some research, don't go on places like Viver and sell yourself short.
• 23:55
  Even if you do want to go a little lower than the average, do research, you know, and find out what they're getting.
• 24:01
  And if you want to go to the lower end, just because you feel like you're starting up, go to the lower end, but write up your deal and then make it clear between you and whoever you're working with.
• 24:13
  This is what I'll do.
• 24:15
  It's definitely to tell you the truth.
• 24:17
  Know your worth.
• 24:18
  Yeah, know your worth.
• 24:19
  And you never know what kind of author you're going to be working with because I've worked with different authors and some want to control more and others don't.
• 24:31
  Some will come back and come back and come back and, you know, do a million edits.
• 24:38
  And some won't, you know.
• 24:41
  But so you have to, you have to write that into your plan.
• 24:46
  And then you can kind of rest because you can go, all right.
• 24:50
  They know up front.
• 24:52
  Well, that is all the time we have for today.
• 24:56
  I want to thank you so much for being on our show.
• 24:59
  Thank you for having me.
• 25:00
  And sharing yourself with us, you know, so much of what you talked about with sort of the story and how it, you know, it comes to you and then the art comes from you from that story.
• 25:13
  I could, you know, I really, really loved hearing about that.
• 25:16
  So, yeah, I mean, did you want to add anything else or?
• 25:20
  No, no.
• 25:21
  That was great to be here.
• 25:23
  Awesome.
• 25:24
  Thanks for being here.
• 25:25
  And to our listeners, whether you hear us locally from the BTV studios in Bedford, Massachusetts or across the globe on such podcast channels as Spotify, Apple podcasts or Amazon Prime.
• 25:37
  Thanks for listening.
• 25:39
  We hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you next time.
• 25:43
  Happy storytelling.