I'm happy to announce my graduation from Missouri State University with a dual degree in Graphic Design and Illustration, a minor in Art History, and a Summa Cum Laude through the Honors College.

December design graduates! We decorated our motarboards with our initials on the Adobe Creative Cloud icons

College was a wild and weird adventure; I struggled, grew, and learned more than can be summarized in a few pithy lines in a blog post. At many points, I had far too much on my plate; hence I rarely shared what I was up to on this blog. It has been a blast, though, and I've been up to a lot!


The last few semesters were rough in several ways, and although all through college I was blessed with a loving family, wonderful friends, awesome classmates, some support at school, and fairly good health, I am currently extremely relieved to be finished with school. I pushed hard to graduate a semester early, and am taking a "summer off in winter" to recoup and work on personal and freelance projects before moving.

This is one of my favorite photos with some of my close friends, from a different program, who graduated before me

I can't emphasize how wonderful it is to sit and read a good challenging book by the light of a Christmas tree, with no homework and no stress. And, on warmer days, to take my sketchbook and a thermos of tea out on a hike.

Just a phone photo of the gorgeous landscape I can escape to everyday at the moment :)

Now that the holiday travels are over, I'm getting started on some of those exciting projects.
If you are interested, keep an eye on:

Instagram  |  @shealynnsfaerie (For sneak peeks, pretty pictures, and weird Stories of my adventures)

Etsy  |   @shealynnsfaerie (Handcrafted fairytale jewelry shop, and shop for other artistic curiosities I might be selling)

Website  |   www.shaylynnann.com (I just finished a new design!)

Youtube  |   @shealynnsfaerie (For all video work)

Behance  |   @shaylynnann (This is the backend for my portfolio, and contains some professional projects that are not in my more curated website portfolio)

Society6   |  Shealynns Faerie (A shop for purchasing prints and merchandise with my original designs on it--there's not much up yet, but that will change!)

There is also Pinterest (for fun and research), Twitter (if you want an auto-feed for updates; I don't really tweet), and, of course, this blog (with a new and more navigable design)!



As well, I will be spending most of my work hours on freelance projects which can't be shared at this stage. Stay tuned :)

As you can see, I have a lot of plans. Plans for this blog include actually blogging.

As an art student, I generated a ton of work while in school.

These are just the sketchbooks, nevermind the boxes full of loose drawings and portfolio cases of finished work and all the digital projects and prints. There are tubs of this stuff, people, and terrabytes of files. Also I'm missing at least one sketchbook in this pile. That is mildly concerning. There is another box somewhere out there to unpack...

Many artists don't like to share old work and will actively purge their websites and social media of any outdated work. I understand this urge to let people see only your best work-- but considering that I haven't gone back and deleted all the posts on this blog that I wrote as a 13 year old, I think it's clear that I'm not terribly fussed about embarrassing myself in public.

A couple of years ago, I wrote some blog posts sharing pieces from freshman and sophmore year. It's so strange to go back to those posts; I was in many ways a completely different person then. I've grown so much as an artist and as a person since those foundation courses, but it's interesting to see the development in hindsight.

Over the next several weeks, I'll be doing some similar art dumps here on the blog, sharing pieces from my later college years. They will continue to be filed under the "college art class" tag. Maybe someday in the future I will go through and delete these posts, but for now I'd like to share some of the process (and struggle, and occasional piece I am still proud of). My portfolio website can be the space for ruthless curation; this blog is the place for messy creation.

So keep an eye out for new posts and new projects in the coming weeks. For now, though, I'm bundling up for a hike and then a comfortable evening of homemade food and board games with my family.