Want to make a pitch-ready collection with me for free?

 

 

On August 11, I'm opening the doors to my 6-month mentorship, The Art of Collections, and it's only open for about a week. Inside, you'll learn how to:

And to celebrate, we're kicking things off with a mini collection challenge! It starts right now, with the prompt in this email.

 

This mini collection challenge is a taste of what you'll learn inside the program. By the end of the challenge you'll have a collection of marketable art that's ready to pitch to art directors.

 

Joining the challenge is simple!

 

 

Animals are one of the most popular evergreen trends in licensing! An evergreen trend simply means that it’s something that’s always popular rather than a hot trend that surges in popularity and fades quickly. Think florals, animals, classic geometric patterns like stripes and polkadots, coastal motifs, and seasonal staples that come around every year like pumpkins, and holiday motifs.

 

Art directors are looking for work that will sell well with their customers. Filling your portfolio with a few solid collections of evergreen trends gives your work massive staying power.

 

In just four weeks, you’ll have an evergreen collection that will be just as relevant this year as it will be a few years from now! I’m big on working smarter, not harder. And building a portfolio of work that will continue to sell throughout the years is one of the best strategies out there.

If you complete all four prompts, you’ll be entered to win a full-ride scholarship to my mentorship program, The Art of Collections, which opens again on August 11th.

 

Yep. One lucky artist is getting in totally free! 💃 (Last year's winner was the lovely Ani who has been an amazing addition to our community! Check her out on Instagram @anigui!)

 

Select an animal to focus on for this challenge. You can't go wrong here, but here are some popular animals to get your creative juices flowing: Cats, dogs, jungle cats, frogs, coastal animals, and tropical birds. If you want to get some extra inspiration, check out the trendiest animals in my trend report!

 

Read my blog posts on mini collections + how to plan a collection below

 

Design your hero illustration!

 

A “hero illustration” is the main focal point of your collection. It typically dictates the collection theme, and is the perfect starting point when designing a collection. You can have multiple heroes in a large collection, but with this mini-collection we’re going to start with one.

 

I chose a crane for my hero illustration. Cranes symbolize good fortune, and I see them pop up often in my travels around Asia. 
 

I origianly drew this crane as part of a much larger Tree of Life illustration featuring 12 different birds. As I was drawing that piece, I knew I might eventually want to repurpose some of the birds into standalone hero illustrations, so I drew each bird individually on its own maximum-size canvas in Procreate before compiling them into the final piece. This is the power of thinking ahead as you create. By drawing each bird separately at maximum canvas size, I gave myself the flexibility to reuse them later. Of all the birds, this crane felt like the most elegant, so it became the one I chose to pull from the larger illustration. In fact, it’s the only finished crane illustration in my portfolio, so I wanted to give it a moment to shine!

 

Every week, you'll get more than just a prompt. You'll get a full tutorial on how to design a stand-out collection!

 

Since we're just kicking things off, I wanted to share a blog post about how to plan a collection.

 

This will help you understand the different elements of a collection like the hero illustrations, secondary patterns, and simple blender patterns. It also walks you through how to plan your collection based on the product categories you want to target!

I’m soooooooooo excited to see what you create this week! 

 

Don’t forget to share your hero illustrations on Instagram with the hashtag #CreateWithCatCoq  and tag me @catcoq in the actual photo of your art for a chance to be featured in this newsletter and on my Instagram Stories.

 

I’ll be featuring submissions each week so you can cheer each other on and connect during this challenge! 

Let's make this the year you get your work licensed! 🎉