Maddie Baker
Gouache
Maddie Baker is an illustrator and comic maker living in St. Louis, with an MFA from the Sam Fox School’s Illustration and Visual Culture and BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University. She loves cannellini beans, Jane Austen, and collecting unwanted scraps to use for art projects, and you can find her five inches deep in cut paper scraps and paint stains. The goal of her work can be summed up by designer Jessica Hische who once said: “There need to be people who show us that the world is a beautiful place worth saving.” Maddie’s work is about the loveliness and humor of everyday life, especially stories about women. Her favorite projects are those with deeply relatable flawed characters, and a healthy dose of playfulness.
What was your favorite book as a child?
When I was very young I loved Click Clack Moo, Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. I found the farm animals demanding a higher quality of life from their disgruntled farmer to be very entertaining and clever!
What is your favorite food?
Any kind of Thai curry! It’s simply the yummiest combination of spices and flavors and its perfect for a pick me up anytime.
Who or what inspires you the most?
The thing that inspires me the most is when I take 10 minutes to stop and look—really look—at whatever is around me. Whether it is the beauty of world around me, the ingenuity of human invention, or the smile of the person next to me—I always feel like there is such a wealth of good and interesting things to pull from.
What cool travel spots would you most highly recommend?
Redfish Lake near Stanley, Idaho, nestled in the Sawtooth Mountains. It is stunningly gorgeous in the summertime, and holds a lot of nostalgia for me. Also the Johnson Shut Ins in Missouri are amazing. It is a series of cool rock formations with water flowing through, perfect for swimming and exploring.
If someone made a potion to summon you, what would go into the cauldron?
For me it is Thai curry, Enya’s Watermark CD, bright pink paint pigment, the smell of citrus, and freeze dried Milk Duds.
What do you love to do for fun?
I love reading Agatha Christie and Jane Austen out loud with my husband, and thrifting at the St. Louis Goodwill bins. I once found a gorgeous hand dyed area rug in all my favorite colors for $5. That is a dang good feeling.
Creative Process:
I am an idea girl. I love exploring lots of possibilities, visual ideas, and research before settling on a course, and even then—I like to leave room for things to shift and grow throughout a project. I never like to let any one project get too stale, so I try to set myself a new challenge for each to get outside of my habitual patterns, whether that is a new tube of hot pink paint or a specific layout of panels for a graphic novel page. I love the mistakes and happy accidents that occur when I am using analog media. I always find that there is some neat, unexpected outcome that way, and I try to implement that analog feel even when I am working digitally.
Awards and honors:
Young Professionals Scholarship (Society of Illustrators Los Angeles 2026)
Graduate Speaker at Sam Fox School Recognition Ceremony May 2025
Rose O’Neill Award For Distinction In Illustration from Sam Fox
School Society of Illustrators LA Bronze Award
Bill Tara Scholarship (SILA) 2025
Association for Mormon Letters Special Award in Children’s Literature
Published books:
The Book of Mormon Storybook Volumes I and II (self-published and authored by Josh and Sarah Sabey, 2023)
The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament Volumes I and II (self-published and authored by Josh and Sarah Sabey, 2025)
The Bible Storybook: The New Testament Volumes I and II (self-published and authored by Josh and Sarah Sabey, 2026)
Forthcoming books:
Mediums:
Gouache, Paper collage, mixed media, digital
Location:
St. Louis, Missouri
Specialties:
Board books, Book Covers, Graphic novel interior art, Humor, Illustration, Indie comics, Picture books, Slice-of-life, Spot art
Visit Maddie at:
maddiebakermakes.com
Instagram: @maddiebakermakes
Available for School Visits:
I’ve never done one but am totally open to it!
Published Books
Dusty Higgins
Gouache
Dusty Higgins is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator who began his career working in newspapers as an editorial cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic designer. He’s worked in branding and marketing, as a professor of digital media, and as an animator/director (Star Forest). He fell in love with storytelling at an early age, drawing comics in elementary school, later writing and drawing three different comic strips four days a week for his college newspaper.
Higgins’ debut graphic novel, Pinocchio Vampire Slayer, was a 2010 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens from the Young Adult Library Association. Higgins has a Masters of Fine Arts in Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design, although that’s not nearly as impressive as his homemade pizza, cultivated from years of practice. When he’s not creating or cooking, he enjoys spending time with his wife, two children, two dogs, and a Venus fly trap named Vinny.
What do you love to do for fun?
I grew up waterskiing on the lake with my dad, who did so with his dad, and I happily take my children to the lake to sling them across the water as I continue that tradition.
What cool travel spots would you most highly recommend?
The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong is a treasure I’m happy to have been able to visit. The stairway up the mountain to it is lined with a hundreds of uniquely posed golden Buddha statues, and it was an inspiring place to visit.
Available for School Visits:
I enjoy talking with kids and giving them a behind the curtain reveal of what professional artists do, talking about ideation and explaining how artists start with sketches to create a blueprint, and what that work goes through next. Basically explaining to them why that how to draw books starts with circles and squares to make a bear, and how even people like me still do that. I like to bring in examples of work that I’ve done to show how things get made and what they look like in early examples versus and then show them what the final product that they see actually looks like. I’ve done this both with graphic novels as well as animation. I like to end the presentations with a group exercise, usually letting the students help me ideate a character or a short four panel comic, depending on how much time we have.
Visit Dusty at:
Website: https://dustyhiggins.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dusty_higgins
Bluesky: @dustyhiggins.bsky.social
Creative Process:
I once had an older, and wiser, colleague who taught painting describe to me how they would teach students the process of painting using a projected image over time. They began by projecting the image completely out of focus, so that the students would only see blurry shapes. The initial paintings would be abstract forms. But every so often, this professor would tweak the focus, slowly bringing the image into a sharp perspective. Each time, the abstract forms would be rendered to a finer degree, before the students finished their painting. My approach to each project I work on is much the same. I work in digital media, traditional mediums, in motion and static, and even in writing. The method works for all of those mediums, and can even inform a different approach to the medium. Begin simple and broad, then I analyze, refine, and repeat until it’s done.
Awards and honors:
2010 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, Young Adult Library Services Association
2015 Junior Library Guild Selection, Junior Library Guild
2017 Junior Library Guild Selection, Junior Library Guild
Specialties:
Action-adventure, Animals, Black & white, Board books, Book Covers, Branding, Character design, Coloring, Concept art, Editorial, Fantasy, Graphic novel interior art, Humor, Illustration, Indie comics, Inking, Lettering, Middle Grade, Mystery, Non-fiction, Penciling, Picture books, Sci-fi, Slice-of-life, Spot art, Storyboarding, Typography, Writing, Young Adult
Who or what inspires you the most?
Nature. One of my go-to things to do when I’m feeling uninspired is to grab some gouache and my art travel bag, and find a nice spot for some plein air painting.
Published books:
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer (SLG Publishing, 2009)
Pinocchio Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater (SLG Publishing, 2010)
Knights of the Living Dead (SLG Publishing 2011)
Turok, Son of Stone Volume 1: Aztlan (Dark Horse 2011)
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer Volume 3: Of Wood and Blood part 1 (SLG Publishing, 2012)
Pinocchio Vampire Slayer of Wood and Blood part 2 (SLG Publishing, 2012)
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Complete Edition (Top Shelf Publishing, 2014)
Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape: Attack of the Alien Horde (Simon and Schuster, 2015)
Valkyrie Beer Delivery (Stela Publishing, 2017)
Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape: Rise of the Robot Army (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
Forthcoming books:
Location:
Bryant, AR
Mediums:
digital, ink, watercolor, gouache
Published Books
Katie Risor
Gouache
Katie Risor is an illustrator, author, and graphic novelist making books for kids. In 2021, her illustrations for Month of the Military Child won a Texas Advertising Award, and her debut author/illustrator early reader, Welcome to the Forest: The Harvest Party, was published in August 2025, the first in a four-part series. Katie grew up in Texas, but now lives in New Syracuse, York with her partner, three cats, and the groundhog who lives under the porch.
Why do you like to draw creatures?
A lot of ingredients went into my brain and came out as my creatures. The true inciting incident is when I got The Neverending Story from Blockbuster when I was about ten years old. I watched that movie, and Falcor’s been flying up in my brain ever since. Before that, Snuffleupagus was my favorite Sesame Street character and I’ve always loved fairies, dragons, gnomes and such. But Falcor was life-changing.
Specialties:
Advertising, Animals, Black & white, Board books, Book Covers, Branding, Character design, Concept art, Editorial, Fantasy, Graphic novel interior art, Humor, Illustration, Indie comics, Lettering, Middle Grade, Non-fiction, Packaging, Penciling, Picture books, Slice-of-life, Spot art, Storyboarding, Writing
Mediums:
Location:
Syracuse, New York
Art Process:
Every project, whether it’s a single illustration or an entire book, starts with an idea. Ideas can pop into my head anytime, but whenever I want to get a new idea I lie on the floor, close my eyes, and wait. Lying on the floor with properly inspiring music will usually give me something.
Next is brainstorming and iteration. For a whole book, this means sketching and storyboarding. For a single illustration this means doing iterative compositional sketches. I want to choose a composition that effectively delivers information to the viewer but is also pleasant, surprising, or delightful to look at, something that goes beyond the main idea.
The best illustrations I do always come from ideas I can see clearly in my head and for which I have a solid execution plan. However, I do like to leave room in the process for playing around. I think that’s why I like traditional media so much; no matter how much you know about the medium, you can’t be fully in control.
Visit Katie at:
Available for School Visits:
I love teaching art workshops for kids of all ages, but especially youngsters. I showcase the design process and inspire kids to tap into their own creativity. I do demos on “what if” storytelling, comics, drawing fantasy creatures, and painting. And finally, I explain the book making process and what sort of jobs creative kids can go into.
Published books:
Welcome to the Forest: The Harvest Party (Andrews McMeel, 2025)
Welcome to the Forest: The Lake Trip (Andrews McMeel, 2026)
Forthcoming books:
Welcome to the Forest book 3 (Andrews McMeel, 2026)
Welcome to the Forest book 4 (Andrews McMeel, 2027)
Published Books
Rivkah LaFille
Gouache
Rivkah LaFille (pronounced “lah-fee”) is a children’s illustrator, writer, designer and graphic novelist living in Austin, TX. Her graphic novel series, Steady Beat, was nominated to the American Library Association’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list. She was nominated as a Lulu of the Year by Friends of Lulu for her work in promoting women in comics, and she won the Austin SCBWI Portfolio Showcase Award, presided over by Caldecott winner and New York Times bestselling author, Dan Santat.
In the early 2000s, she was the publisher and art director of a small literary publishing house, Rabid Press. Her “eureka!” moment happened when one day she woke up and realized she was going to make comics for the rest of her life instead. She did. She does. And she hasn’t looked back since.
Currently, she is illustrating a graphic novel with First Second, another with Candlewick, teaching comics-making classes, and making magic!
What was your favorite book as a child?
Miss Rumphius is STILL one of my favorites. It’s all about leaving the world a better place than we found it, which is basically my life motto.
What do you love to do for fun?
Gardening is my Happy Place. There is something so satisfying in taking care of a plant from seed, watering it, tending it, and watching it turn into a fruit or vegetable that you can eat. But watching the cycles of nature reminds me of the cycles within my own life: that even as the world grows and blooms and dies, new life is born out of it once again.
Mediums:
Specialties:
Art Process:
My art process is a balance between logical problem-solving and creative intuition. I begin by thinking about the project as a whole: what is the tone, the technique, the style that would best suit this project? What is its age range? What’s the timeline? Every project has different demands, and before I start drawing, I think of what those demands are and how to answer them.
The rest, however, is largely a matter of doing and refining. Whether I’m creating fast and loose storyboards or finely detailed picture books, working in digital or analog mediums, the end result is an editorial style that refines itself with every step until it becomes exactly what the project needs: something that speaks loudly and clearly to my audience!
Published books:
Steady Beat v1 – (YA LGBTQ+ graphic novel, Tokyopop, 2005)
Steady Beat v2 – (YA LGBTQ+ graphic novel, Tokyopop, 2007)
Mangaka America – (tutorial book, HarperCollins, 2007)
Creative Writing With Miss Mary Mac – (nonfiction graphic novel, First Second, date TBD)
Location:
Visit Rivkah at:
Available for School Visits:
I love talking to (and with) students! My talks range from discussing my comics-making process to more inspirational-type discussions about finding your path in life and how to not be afraid of making mistakes…and to learn and grown from them! I specialize in talking to teens and tweens, but also adults wanting to make graphic novels for ages babies to teens.
Awards and honors:
Nominated to the YALSA GREAT GRAPHIC NOVELS for TEENS List in 2007
Friends of Lulu Award 2007 – Nominee
Winner of the 2019 SCBWI Portfolio Showcase Award (and runner up previous two years) presided over by Caldecott
Winner Dan Santat
Published Books
David Pierce
Gouache
Dave Pierce is an Author/Illustrator from the Northwest.
He re-discovered his passion for telling stories when he taught reading alongside his wife in the same Elementary classroom. Shortly after, he gained his certification to teach Art (K-12) and dove into the kidlit world via SCBWI. He is motivated by the “Ah-Hah!” moments that come when children read and stories that invite us to explore our place in the world.
He graduated from The Evergreen State College with an emphasis in Illustration, and studied Character Design and Digital Painting through The Oatley Academy of Visual Storytelling.
What do you love to do for fun?
Snowboard, Soccer, Hike, Music, Board and Video Games, and lots more. I probably have too many interests, but each one is so fun.
Favorite travel spots:
I’ve done a lot of traveling around Europe, but I have to say that Austria is my favorite. Go to Salzburg in the late spring and head into the mountains. Tell me you won’t have The Sound of Music running through your head!
Mediums:
Specialties:
Action-adventure, Black & white, Book Covers, Concept art, Fantasy, Illustration, Middle Grade, Penciling, Picture books, Sci-fi, Writing, Young Adult
Art Process:
I try and leverage both digital and traditional media in my workflow.
One of the best things about working digitally is you can always undo things and make sweeping adjustments to composition by transforming and moving. This makes it a powerful tool early on when the ideas are just sketches. (Just don’t forget to click Save!)
As good as digital tools are, there’s something so *tangible* about creating traditionally. The feels and smells are wonderful, and I’ll get happy accidents that can inspire. Plus, you can work outside on a sunny day! (A rare treat in Washington State.)
I’ll usually make thumbnail ideas by pencil and scan them into the computer. Once in digital form, I’ll move its chunks around until I’m excited about it. From here I have a choice to continue digitally or print out the art for transfer via a light table. This works great for moving forward with Ink and Watercolor.
Sometimes I’ll stay traditional if it’s graphite or dry media, or go all-digital if it’s going to be something that demands more control. The important thing is knowing your tools and which approach will be most useful.
Location:
Visit David at:
Available for School Visits:
I enjoy doing visits in the classroom setting. This allows for hands-on learning with the students and making something collaborative together. My goal is to inspire the next generation of creatives, and to encourage anyone to try drawing and storytelling, whether they consider themselves an artist or not.
