A life-size airplane in the classroom
For a year-long study of cultures around the world, I built an airplane interior in the room. Students boarded to travel. The drawing was the door into the lesson, not the decoration on it.
Forney, Texas · Illustrator & muralist · Ten years teaching K–5 art
I make things kids can hold, walk into, and grow.
Hand-drawn illustration, murals, and built worlds by an art teacher who spent a decade learning what actually lands with a seven-year-old — and the ten years since making it for real.
Lindsey ColwillBA Art Education, University of North Texas
A note for the Hadley team
Your products are hand-drawn and teacher-designed. So is everything I've made for twenty years. I taught elementary art for ten of them, which means I have drawn for, with, and in front of thousands of children — and I know the difference between art that adults think is cute and art a child actually reaches for.
Since leaving the classroom I've worked as a freelance illustrator and muralist: portraits, book illustrations, murals for schools, churches and homes, theater sets built from a director's brief. Every one of those jobs started with someone else's vision and ended on someone else's date. That is the job you're describing, and it's the one I'm good at.
One honest note. My native tools are pencil, brush, and a very large wall. I'm bringing that hand into Adobe Illustrator now, and the vector studies on this page are the newest work here. The eye is twenty years old; the software is catching up fast.
— Lindsey
What you asked for
- A cute, playful, kid-friendly sensibility
- Ten years of drawing for children, and a mother of three at home checking my work.
- Match and extend an existing style
- Murals across a whole campus in one visual voice; theater sets that had to sit beside pieces someone else built.
- Take creative direction to finished work
- Principals, directors, pastors, homeowners, authors — a decade of other people's briefs.
- Reliable on deadlines at volume
- Freelance since 2016. Every job scoped, budgeted, and delivered to a fixed date.
Work
Grouped the way your brief reads: the drawing itself first, then the proof that I can build to someone else's plan.
Style-match study
An existing set, extended. New pieces that sit naturally beside the originals.
01The reference set on the left, Lindsey's new pieces on the right — one image, wide.
Characters & kid-friendly illustration
Animals, people, and the small warm details children notice first.
02A character or animal — scan or photo, 1600px or wider.
03A second character piece, different subject.
04A portrait or a piece with a child's face done well.
Book illustration
Finished pages, made to an author's brief.
05A book spread or single page, flat scan.
06A second page from the same or another book.
07Process shot if you have one — sketch beside the finished page.
Murals
Schools, churches, and homes — large, permanent, and made for the people who use the room.
08A school mural, shot straight on with the room visible.
09A church or home mural.
10A detail shot — one square yard of a mural up close.
Built worlds
Theater sets and the classroom airplane — drawing that children walked into.
11The airplane interior, if a photo survives.
12A theater set, lit, with the stage in frame.
13A second set, or a prop up close.
Vector studies — Adobe Illustrator
The newest work on the page. Drawn natively in Illustrator.
14A character redrawn as native vector — export as PNG, 2000px.
15A small set of matching icons or animals in one style.
16A flashcard or poster mock-up — a piece as it would ship.
Ten years at Riverchase Elementary
Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD, 2006 to 2016, kindergarten through fifth grade. I never taught art projects for their own sake. Each year had one big idea — honor, culture, self-respect — and every lesson, wall, and build pointed back at it.
A garden every grade planted
I pursued and won grant funding for a school-wide garden — fruit, vegetable, and floral beds, planted by every grade level. When I left, the school named the garden after me.
Murals, clubs, and a stage
I transformed the campus with murals, founded after-school programs in art and dance, and widened what children there could reach: fine arts, dance, theater.
How I work
"Creative efficiency — problem-solving for the best result with the materials, budget, and time actually available."The line I'd put on my own flashcard.
- I start from your brief, not mine
- Twenty years of other people's visions — a principal's, a director's, an author's — carried through to a finished thing they recognized as theirs.
- I finish the set
- Murals across one campus had to feel like one hand. New pieces have to sit beside the old ones without a seam.
- I ship on the date
- Sets open on opening night. Events happen on the day. A decade of freelance work has never taught me otherwise.
- I like the volume
- A brand that ships every month is a classroom that resets every week. I did that for ten years and loved it.
Background
- 2016 – nowFreelance illustrator & muralistPortraits, murals, book illustration, theater set design and build, event design. Dallas–Fort Worth.
- 2006 – 2016Art teacher, K–5Riverchase Elementary, Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.
- 2001 – 2003AutoCAD technicianHearn Surveying Company. Precise technical drawing to deadline — the first drawing software I learned, and not the last.
Education
Bachelor of Arts, Art Education
University of North Texas
Associate of Fine Arts
Trinity Valley Community College
Texas Educator Certification, Art
Eligible for reactivation