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

Ciana Malchione

• Website: https://cianamalchione.wixsite.com/work

• Instagram: @cianamacaroni

Below is an awesome Q&A that our friend Katy Adebayo, conducted with Ciana.

Not only is Ciana Malchione motivated to be an arts teacher as well as a picture book illustrator, but she also sees a unique connection between the two that will undoubtedly benefit many of her students and future readers. She shares those insights in the following interview, as well as how she illustrates with collage, her recent experience with art school, and how she sees her future unfolding.

Hi! Could you tell us a little about yourself? 

Hi! I'm an illustrator, printmaker, and arts educator. I grew up in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a tiny mushroom farming town that's considered the "Mushroom Capital of the World." (There's a Mushroom Festival every year, and on New Year's Eve they drop a giant glowing mushroom in the town square — it's a whole thing.) After living in other small Pennsylvania towns, I moved to New York City to attend Cooper Union, where I graduated last month.

What is your earliest memory of making art? How long after that did you realize that you wanted to “be an artist”?

I was always drawing as a kid. I still have my first "sketchbook," and it's filled with family members' names in elaborate hearts, princesses, and knights. My grandmother knew how to draw ladies, pretty flowers, and fruit bowls, so I also tried to copy her drawings. Only in high school did I realize I wanted to be an artist. I had an amazing teacher, Candace Rakers, who took art seriously and mentored me.

I’d love to hear more about being an arts educator. Could you share more about that?

Sure! My formal education is in Art, and I've been teaching at various programs for the past few years. I taught a Drawing class for two years at an after-school art program for NYC public high school students (which was the best!), and now I'm a Teaching Assistant at an elementary school. I also led a workshop for 6-9 year olds recently, where I got to conduct an art lesson inspired by a picture book. That united my two great loves, I hope to do more of that. I find teaching art deeply gratifying and intend to do it all my life. I plan on pursuing my Masters in Art Education at some point.

Some of your recent pieces are done in a really eye-catching and fun collage style. Could you share a bit about the process that you go through to make those illustrations? Also, what are some of the benefits and challenges of working in this way?

Thank you! I started playing around with collage in my sketchbook a few months ago and liked the way it looked, so I've been making final illustrations in that style. The process is pretty simple. With these mermaid illustrations, I started by painting the backgrounds first in gouache. Then I chose a texture from my collection of scrap papers and built a simple body. All my other colors and textures were then selected to contrast well against the first one. It's a very organic process — I build the images up piece by piece and just see where they go. If I do plan the composition ahead of time, I sketch it digitally and print out a template for myself.

There are quite a few benefits to collage. For one thing, you can lay everything out and see how it's going to work together before you commit and glue it all down. You don't have that luxury with something like watercolor. A watercolor painting is all on one final surface, so if you mess up any part of it the whole piece is spoiled. I also like that collage uses up all the fun scraps leftover from other projects. I did a lot of printmaking this year and had tons of inky papers to work with.

I think the main challenge of working in collage is translating your physical piece to a digital file. Scanners can't pick up some colors (like neons), and it can be difficult to get the colors right even if they do. I'm still working on that. I do a lot of post-production editing now, but I may eventually invest in a photography setup.

Could we see some of your favorite pieces to date?

Sure! Here are some pieces from #MerMay, an art challenge where you make a mermaid every day for the month of May. I love mythical creatures and had never done a monthly challenge, so I figured I'd give it a go this year. Because I had to make an illustration every day, I didn't have time to plan each one. I sat down for about an hour each day and made something quick and playful. I'm really happy with the way these came out.

I understand that you graduated recently with a Fine Art degree. Congratulations! What is the most significant reason why you went to school for this degree, and how has it moved you towards your aspiration to be a picture book illustrator?

That's correct! Thank you! I graduated from Cooper Union in New York City last month with a bachelor's degree in Fine Art. Cooper is unconventional in that there are no Majors beyond "Art." You take classes across art fields and everyone graduates with a BFA.

I went to high school in the middle of nowhere, so when I got accepted into an art school in NYC, I jumped at the opportunity. Cooper Union was also a tuition-free school until 2013, and although they started charging after that, it was still significantly cheaper than other art schools, which is what allowed me to go. It wasn't the best school for me in some ways. I knew pretty immediately that I wanted to pursue illustration, and there was no Illustration program at Cooper. But being forced to expand beyond one niche field gave me a ton of useful skills. I took classes in writing, printmaking, teaching and graphic design, none of which I would have tried if I had followed a narrow course. And I'm actually glad I'm not pursuing a full-time career in illustration. I think it would have killed my passion a little bit if my favorite thing to do was also my primary source of income.

As far as how it moved me toward picture book illustration, I'd say the lack of Illustration courses motivated me to pursue that work on my own time. I took Continuing Ed classes at SVA (School of Visual Arts in NYC), signed up for SVS and joined the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators). I started building my portfolio and filling in the gaps in my education, which I've been doing ever since!

How do you see picture books, and the art within them, shaping the future?

I think I have the same blind faith in picture books that I do in teaching. I imagine it's rare that a student will come back to you years later and tell you how you changed their life forever, even if you did. You do the work with the belief that you can make a positive impact on someone's life. It's the same way with picture books, and I don't think they need to be very didactic to do that. The simple act of seeing oneself or one's lived experience represented in media can have a profound effect. I just read "Milo Imagines the World," a new picture book by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson, which *spoiler alert* is about the child of an incarcerated parent. I grew up with an incarcerated father who I would visit and make drawings for, just like Milo. But there was a lot of shame surrounding that experience for me as a kid. Having a book like that when I was young could have normalized our situation and saved me from some confusion as I got older.

As a final question, where do you see yourself five years down the road? What will mean the most to you if you are able to achieve it in the future?

Five years from now, I see myself working as an art teacher, either with or in the process of earning a further degree in Art Education. I see myself continuing to work on my children's book illustration portfolio on the side. I'm still quite new to illustration and feel that I have years of honing my craft before feeling ready to pursue representation. If in five years I'm just beginning to contact agents, but I have a body of work that I really believe in, I'll be satisfied with that.

The most meaningful thing that I could do would be to illustrate a picture book I was proud of, to be able to physically hold it in my hands and share it with my students. Right now I imagine that would be a nonfiction picture book biography 'cause that's my jam, but that could change.

Thanks so much, Ciana! Best wishes for the future!

Featured students are selected from our amazing group of members! Want a chance to improve your illustration skills? Become an SVSLearn member today for 30 days with our free trial and take the next step on your journey to becoming a working illustrator.