It’s time for our next Featured Student! For July we are featuring:

Elena Marengoni

• Instagram: @numi.illu

• Behance: @elenamarengoni

• SVS Forum: @ELENA MARENGONI

Below is an awesome Q&A that Kathryn Adebayo (@KATHRYNADEBAYO) conducted with Elena Marengoni:

It can be such an inspiration and learning opportunity to jump into another artist’s world, and Elena’s stories and artwork are a particularly enjoyable world to explore. In this Q&A she shares how she came to illustration, why she’s sticking with it, and her goals moving forward.

Hi Elena! Could you tell us a bit about yourself and where your passion for art comes from?

Sure! Let’s start with the basics: I’m 29 years old, I’m Italian and I live in Milan.

My passion for drawing and making art began when I was a little kid: as a two-year-old girl, I was all about silly monsters (mostly just messy colorful lines drawn with a marker that only I was able to interpret). I don’t know how, and I don’t even know if it’s entirely true, but the fun I had seeing those weird shapes “come to life” on a piece of paper got my creative engine started.  

I grew up with a special passion for art also because pretty much everyone in my family practices some form of creativity, no matter how non-artistic their jobs are. My mom is a teacher, but the art projects she has done with the kids were amazing. My sister is an engineer, but she’s great with watercolor and calligraphy and her kids are picking up these skills as well. Hopefully, they will be passed on.

As I was growing up, I kept hearing the fascinating stories of other family members who had pursued artistic careers: above all stood my grandfather (whom I’ve never met) who came back from the war and spent a few years working and studying art at a local school in Milan to become a graphic designer and illustrator. In more recent years, this story has inspired me more than ever and it has reminded me about what one can achieve through hard work and serious commitment.

Today, kidlit art is my main focus and interest and I love thinking that the images I create can have an impact on the children, and can help them to reflect, to see the world under a new light, to learn new things,... There’s a huge responsibility that comes with this job and I just love it.

What has your path as an artist looked like? Have you always pursued illustration, or have you arrived here from other directions?

Despite my artistic aspirations, I didn’t start out as an illustrator. I have a background in service design and my work has been -and still partly is- at the intersection of user research, strategy, and user experience design. I’ve always striven to find projects that would give me an opportunity to design for children and even work with them, making them part of the design process. I guess that ‘creating for children’ has been the real red thread of my career up until this point.   

About 3-4 years ago, I started feeling an urge to direct my career towards a more artistic path. I enjoy being a designer, but I can’t think of a future in which art isn’t present as well and I think that illustration is the perfect synthesis of these two worlds. So, I started working on my drawing skills more seriously, attending workshops, taking classes, sitting down at my desk to sketch something any time I could. It took me a couple of years to get to a place where I was comfortable that I could deliver good-quality outputs and that’s when I started taking on small private commissions. In the meantime, other things changed in my life and I transitioned from a full-time job to a freelance position, which now gives me more freedom to pursue new opportunities in illustration. 

Could we see some of your work that you think represents important steps in your artistic journey?

The Botanical Garden: this is one of the first pieces I’ve made in what I would now call ‘my style’

Penny and the dog (Inktober SVSLearn challenge): this piece was made for an SVSLearn contest. It gave me an opportunity to improve my creative process and make it more organized. I spent a lot of time on every step (thumbnails, character design, value studies, …) and felt so much more confident about my skills afterward.

The Journey: this is probably my favorite watercolor piece. It taught me a lot about how to use colors for better storytelling.

Dreams: this piece helped me to experiment further with digital tools and to create something that still felt coherent in style

Has anyone ever given you advice or mentioned something to you that changed your life as an artist?

If I had to name two things that really made the difference for me, they’d be the encouragement I got from my friends and my family and the immensely valuable insights of the SVSLearn podcasts. There’s one specific moment I’d like to recall.

About a year and a half ago, I came down with pneumonia. It wasn’t fun. I had to stay at home for about a month and I spent most of the time drawing and learning about art and illustration to distract myself. One day, I was sitting on the couch and listening to Episode 02 of the ‘3 Point Perspective’ podcast, titled: “Am I Too Old to Get Started?” I took notes throughout and sat still, listening carefully to every single word. Maybe the high fever had a part in this, but I clearly remember hitting the pause button at the end of the episode, looking around the room and thinking: “It may take some time, but now I know that it can be done.” Everything I did from that moment on had a clearer purpose.  

What has been one of the hardest things to overcome while putting your art out into the world? And what is one of the best outcomes of creating what you create?

A very practical challenge for me has been finding a space where I could create: me and my husband live in a small apartment and I haven’t had a dedicated desk for a long time. Also, we have a cat: once, I ended up locking myself up in the bathroom to paint, cause the cat would keep trying to lick my color palette. :)  Luckily, there’s a desk in our bedroom now!

Also, for a long time, I thought I hadn’t found my artistic voice yet. The fact that I love working with analog tools as much as with digital made it a little harder for me to figure out what my ‘style’ was. What I’ve come to realize over time is that it is possible to use different mediums with a similar approach, and create images that can co-exist within the same portfolio.  

On the other hand, when I make art the greatest satisfaction comes from seeing that the people I create art for are excited about it and talk about it: not me or my art specifically, but its content, the world that my images recreate, and so on. The fact that I am working directly with clients makes everything feel more ‘personal’ and I’ve been lucky enough to meet passionate people with really creative projects.

What are your art goals for the coming year, and how are you working towards them?

In the coming year, I mainly want to focus on children’s book illustration. I am working on a couple of private commissions at the moment, but I would love to have the opportunity to work with a publisher. Also, I have started a self-initiated project with one of my best friends: she’s such a talented writer and we both believe that stories can help us all acquire a new perspective on the world and can convey important messages. We would love to publish something and we started working on a picture book together.

I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Thank you so much, Elena!

If you would be interested in sharing your work for a chance to be featured for June head over to the SVS Learn Forum and post your best work by July 31st.