We were lucky to catch up with Coyanne Granderson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Coyanne, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I would say that I knew I wanted to do art professionally since I was in kindergarten when I realized that my favorite show, Clifford the Big Red Dog, started off as a children’s book. That spark continued to drive me throughout my life and got me into practicing animation at Sheldon High School where I really felt like I was on the right path towards a career in animation. However, since then, I felt like I wasn’t pushing myself more once I had made it into college. Despite taking all of the right classes and courses, I was still facing rejection left and right from the studies I looked up. This started my insecurities about if I had chosen the right path or if my art was enough for the career I wanted. In comparison to artists I barely knew who were my colleagues or younger, who were already getting their first internship or job. I wondered what I was doing wrong. What was my excuse? Was my portfolio not enough? Am I not good enough?

I started to lose my drive and question if I would ever make it. However, I never stopped creating. I accepted commissions in the meantime and even started my short lived business selling stickers and clay charms. It wasn’t until I was approached by an agent in 2021 about working on a children’s book that I realized I do have the skill and potential to make it as a freelancer, but that was also because of my colleagues and friends that I have made along the way. Without her, I don’t feel like I would have been offered this opportunity the way that I did and for that, I’m grateful. The children’s book never came to reality due to the publisher not wanting to credit me as the illustrator, but despite that I still hold onto the excitement that came from that experience. It was a reminder that a creative path is for me. Despite the rejections, the insecurities and fears. Art is what I want to do. I want to draw fairies relaxing in their little homes or a child learning how to roller skate for the first time or perhaps a shark with a silly little hat on because that brings me joy! I enjoy the process of talking with my colleagues about what they are working on, bouncing off ideas between one another and getting inspired by them. This path was the right one and I have to thank Clifford for inspiring all those years ago.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My main inspirations are: children’s books, fairy tales, horror movies and late nineties / early two thousands magical girl shows. Each of these have inspired me to think up new ideas of how I want to take my art since each of them create such a different atmosphere of design to choose from. Especially if we are talking about what decade I want to focus on, such as the late nineties and Y2K aesthetic. There’s a certain charm that can’t fully be recreated due to how much technology has advanced, but I do want to create art that honors that time frame, but caters to a new day and age.

I think what has attracted potential clients to my art would be the shape language and textures that I play around with most within my art. That was the main comment that I would receive from y colleagues and friends when it came to my art, so I imagine it would be roughly the same for my clients. I would have to thank shows like Samurai Jack and Foster’s Home for making me adore shape language to begin with as both of these shows are simply amazing at it. I hope to eventually push my art in the same way as these shows have done, but still being true to myself at the end of the day. After all, textures are my second love to art itself as it can help elevate the drawing even further.

I hope that as I continue experimenting with my craft, many people will be able to immediately tell who I am. Just a whimsical, colorful person through and through who wants to remind you of a time that is still present and familiar to you, even if you haven’t seen it before in person, but you have seen it before in your imagination or stories told to you before.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My current goal right now is to become a tattoo artist! I’ve been interested in tattoos for a while, but never really saw myself being an artist due to the culture surrounding it at the time. It didn’t help that most of the art at the time was mainly American traditional which never really appealed to me. However, within the last three years, I’ve come across artist like Laura Anunnaki and Nikaela (@ghostbrunch) who had bright, colorful and cutesy styles that really resinated with me. Soon enough, I started to notice many of my favorite online artist pick up tattooing and the same could be said of my colleagues. It wasn’t until my friend Stieve said that she was going to start tattooing that I figured, what the heck! I’ll take a shot at it and here I am now. I’m still currently working on my portfolio to show around some studios, but I’ve been lucky enough to get a few artist who were interested in giving me advice here and there until I land an apprenticeship. I do want to do the traditional route of one, but I’ve also noticed that not many artists don’t seem to have the time for an apprenticeship these days, which is understandable. I’m happy to be in a time where there is a lot of information out there to learn on your own in the meantime as I continue to work on my portfolio. Right now, I’m looking up information on the medical side of tattooing since I don’t want to be ignorant in that area when the time comes to practicing on real people. I’m sure whoever my future mentor is will teach me as much as they know, but I know it doesn’t hurt to teach myself now while I wait.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson that I’m learning right now is that I should have worked on more personal projects throughout my time in college. I feel like that is the biggest reason as to why I haven’t worked in the animation industry, nor have I worked on anything really big freelancing wise outside of a few small commissions here and there. It made me start to believe that I went through college for nothing and didn’t gain much since no one was interested in my portfolio or bothering with an interview. I started to feel like it was because my work wasn’t good enough, but in reality it’s because my current portfolio still looks too much like homework assignments then personal projects.

Right now, my portfolio is only giving a hint of who I am, what I am able to do and create. A hint can only take me so far when it comes to a hiring manager giving me the time of day. So right now, I’m currently working on my own personal projects to keep me busy as I slowly update my portfolio. Soon enough, I can see myself working on something big within the next few years!

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cloudy_cocoa/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coyanne-granderson-4a673217b/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cloud_doodles

Image Credits
For the sixth image, the elven character involved belongs to my friend Hannah Silva. Their instagram is @citrusroe. The photograph of myself was done by my sister, Sucoyia Granderson