Illustrator Spotlight: Colleen Kong-Savage

Nov. 1, 2024

We are pleased to feature illustrator Colleen Kong-Savage and her banner design for Kidlit411 as well as her picture book, Piano Wants to Play (Page Street Kids). Enter to win a copy via the Rafflecopter below.

Tell us about yourself and how you came to illustrate for children.

I did not fully appreciate the beauty and delight offered by a picture book until I became an adult. Even before I had a child, I’d spend hours in Books Of Wonder, a children’s bookstore in NYC, relishing pages of gorgeous illustrations, cackling over silly stories. I got an MFA in fiction writing but I had floundered thru classes because we’d be assigned to read two novels a week, and I read so sloooowwwwly. Picture books was my speed. Picture books with their visual element speak to me.

Congrats on your recent book, Piano Wants to Play! Tell us about it and how you approached the project.

The book is about a Piano who needs someone to play it in order to make music. Some kids are great pianists, others… not so much. Ultimately the story is about the need for voice. We are expressive beings because we are social beings. If you cannot speak, if you make no sound, do you still exist?

Congrats on your website banner design? How did you approach this project?

I’m expanding my portfolio to include digital illustration, so this banner was a perfect challenge. Ironically as I sketched with my apple pencil and iPad, I was fondly remembering old-school “phone technology”—two tin cans connected with string. Can’t dial 411 on a tin can but I wanted to combine the ideas of communication and play for KidLit411.

What is your preferred medium and illustration process?

Collage is my favorite art process. My apartment is a blizzard of paper bits when I illustrate. And my partner knows me so well, that when he sweeps the floor, he always shows me what’s in the dustpan and asks if he can throw everything away.

What projects are you working on now?

I’m illustrating Mia Wenjen’s picture book, Fortune Cookies for All, a historical fiction about how the fortune cookie came to be. Did you know this little treat was invented not by a Chinese American, but a Japanese American? Also, I’m about to launch into an artist residency at the Queens Library—I’ll be doing different art projects with 4-18 year olds and plan on creating a giant paper collage work—I don’t know what yet, I just want to work large in paper for a change.

What is one thing most people don't know about you?

I have this annoying habit of falling asleep when my sketch is not speaking to me—which is often. If I’m not connecting to an image, my brain prefers to shut off COMPLETELY, instead of working towards a decent drawing.

Where can people find you online?

My website is CKongSavage.com (or kongsavage.com). For social media I am mostly on instagram, @kongsavage.

As a child, Colleen Kong-Savage hopscotched about the globe—Philippines, Zambia, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia—then settled in New York City as an adult. In NYC she earned a masters degree in fiction-writing, a scholarship to the Art Students League, and a black belt in taekwondo. Since 2021, she has also been a teaching artist, showing teens how to create murals and inspiring littler folk to explore different mediums. Colleen made her picture book illustration debut with The Turtle Ship by Helena Ku-Rhee, and this past spring she also debuted as an author with Piano Wants to Play. She suffers from a sugar addiction and a driving phobia, but is quite pleased with her gingerbread cookie-making skills.

Order her book Piano Wants to Play here!

a Rafflecopter giveaway