Sara Lynn Cramb is a designer and illustrator who creates illustrations for children’s books, apps, and other educational products. Sara’s clients include Scholastic, Nosy Crow, Silver Dolphin Books, Cambridge University Press, and the Akron Zoo. Through her work, she introduces young learners to the world outside their doors. She also teaches them about human biology, geography, molecules, and more. Sara’s Nature Coloring Pages caught my eye and I reached out to her to learn more about them. Sara has worked as a freelance professional for more than 7 years. In today’s episode, I speak with her about her work and how she built her career.
Sara Lynn Cramb is a designer and illustrator who creates illustrations for children’s books, apps, and other educational products. Sara’s clients include Scholastic, Nosy Crow, Silver Dolphin Books, Cambridge University Press, and the Akron Zoo.
Through her work, she introduces young learners to the world outside their doors. She also teaches them about human biology, geography, molecules, and more.
Sara’s Nature Coloring Pages caught my eye and I reached out to her to learn more about them.
Sara has worked as a freelance professional for more than 7 years. In today’s episode, I speak with her about her work and how she built her career.
LINKS
Nature Activity Sheets by Sara
Sara's Red Bubble Store (magnets, stickers, children's clothes, and more)
Sara on Instagram (@saralynncreative)
Tania Marien:
Welcome to Talaterra, a podcast about freelance educators working in natural resource fields and environmental education. Who are these educators? What do they do? Join me and let's find out together. This is your host, Tania Marien.
Tania Marien:
Today my guest is Sara Lynn Cramb. Sara is a designer and illustrator who creates illustrations for children's books, apps, and other educational products. Sara's clients include Scholastic, Nosy Crow, Silver Dolphin Books, Cambridge University Press, and the Akron Zoo. Through her work she introduces young learners to the world outside their doors. She also teaches them about human biology, geography, molecules, and so much more. Sara's nature coloring pages caught my eye and I reached out to her to learn more about them. Sara has worked as a freelance professional for more than seven years. In this episode, I speak with Sara about her work and how she built her career. Let's join the conversation.
Tania Marien:
Sara, welcome and thank you for being here today. When I first saw your coloring pages, I knew I had to speak with you because I think parents, and teachers, and students would really enjoy engaging with them. Now your coloring pages are a relatively new endeavor?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Yeah, I started about a year ago. Roughly last September, I started putting those out. I've been a project I've been interested in working on for a while and just hadn't really had an opportunity to fully formulate the idea or get it into production on a sustainable level. So I started implementing a full plan to start doing those on a monthly basis around last September. I've been doing it every month since then. I have a newsletter that goes out on a monthly basis that's included into, along with occasional news updates and that sort of thing. I try not to bombard people with it. I know they're there for the coloring pages and they want to hear about me so much sometimes. It's been really fun, the focus of it is nature or educational things about nature, animals, the environment in some way. I've toyed with also including some information on prehistoric creatures recently, just because it's something that interests me greatly and I'm looking for an outlet for my interest in that as well.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
But yeah, the focus is really to get kids interested in the subjects and learning about them, and also incorporates a little bit of creativity into it where they're either coloring or some of the pages also teach them to draw some of the animals. So it's a nice mix of art, and science, and educational things that I wanted as a kid. When I was little, I always wanted something like this and it didn't ever really exist. I kept looking for things that were like this, that existed and I couldn't find them. [inaudible 00:03:31], why doesn't this exist because I wanted to do it my whole childhood and it was just never there. So I'm making these partially for my past self to enjoy, but also for current kids and kids at heart to enjoy them.
Tania Marien:
I was wondering if we could back up a bit and talk about what came before them. You lead an exciting career as an illustrator, and you've completed illustrations about so many subjects. Through your work, you've taught learners about ancient history, oceanography, molecules, geology, geography, plants, animals, human biology, dinosaurs, as you just mentioned, because dinosaurs are present there, culture, archeology, placemats, everyday life, and even something about each US state you've illustrated. I was wondering what drew you to the field of graphic design and illustration?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I've always wanted to do art in some way as a child. I was making my own picture books with crayons and cut up pieces of paper stapled together when I was little. So I always knew I wanted to do something involved in that. I also played outside a lot and explored animals a lot, and watched documentaries, and had all the books and everything. So I knew I wanted to do something that involved both of those two things. I didn't really know about scientific illustration until I had graduated college, unfortunately. But I knew I wanted to go into something involving design or art in some way when I was younger. One of the things that made me focus my career even more was I interned at the Akron Zoo for my last year and for a few months after college. I got to do all kinds of cool signage and attracted with education animals.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I was basically in charge of designing and illustrating a bunch of the signage there, and I was like, "Oh yeah, I like this." I like doing this particular educational thing and I want to keep doing this because this feels great. I love being around all of these amazing things.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. That's a wonderful internship, oh how fun.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
It was great. I used to go for walks at lunch and go watch the tigers, and the red pandas, and things like that. I loved it.
Tania Marien:
Okay. So the internship that is what's led you down your current path?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
It showed me how those interests could work together in a way that I didn't really know existed before, because I wasn't really exposed to anything like that before that.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Your then schooling then? What was your major in college?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
My major was in graphic design with a minor in illustration. I even did some children's illustration classes for the illustration liner. So obviously those interests were there, I just wasn't trying to flush them out fully at the time.
Tania Marien:
So you had this internship, and you learned how to design interpretive signage. You learned about interpretation interacting with the public, learning in informal learning environments. What did you do next?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
After that I got a job at a, I guess it was a health promotion company. We would design websites, encouraging healthy living behaviors and that. A lot of the websites were revolved around maps and I illustrated a lot of maps for that, even though I was supposed to be the graphic designer, I ended up doing most of the illustration for them. So that got me into, hey, maps are also really interesting and fun to draw and you can learn a whole lot of stuff from them, so that combined from there. The other parts of the job weren't as exciting to me there, but I was like, "Oh, I really love drawing all these maps and learning about all of this." I took that away from that job, I was there for a few years before going full-time freelance.
Tania Marien:
What made you go freelance? Was it a conscious decision? Was it an event that prompted you to take this next step?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
It was, partially. I think a few different things. It's something I had wanted to do for a while. My last year or so at that job, I was starting to freelance already and trying to figure out ways to make that work for me full-time. Then we moved from Michigan to Georgia, so my husband could go to grad school, and I took the plunge then and decided I was going to try to give it a go, and see if I could get it to work for me, and get enough client work and all of that.
Tania Marien:
What did you do first then to introduce yourself to potential clients?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
A lot of it was some design clients I carried with me from the freelance at work I'd been doing for my full-time career, and then I picked up a few more clients. My first children's book was actually seven years ago this month, I think. They contacted me after seeing some of my maps on my portfolio, and that's where I got my first 50 States book. It was the biggest illustration project I'd ever had, the first publishing project I'd ever had. It was very exciting and kind of a whirlwind because if you know anything about children's publishing, it's usually very fast. So I got to learn how to work way faster than I normally had.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
It was very exciting getting to learn all this information about the different states, and accurately portraying everything from them, and creating the map, and making sure everything was accurate, but still was very fun and exciting. That turned into, I think it was a fun book, and a puzzle, and a poster, and all kinds of fun things like that. They've continued to reach out to me for other map projects after that one. But that was the first one, it was the most exciting thing because I just had never done a project that big before for illustration. That was great. I guess this is the seven year anniversary of it now.
Tania Marien:
Well, congratulations.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Thanks.
Tania Marien:
So for those of us who have often wondered about how authors and illustrators work together, and how a children's book is designed, can you provide a brief overview of the process and what that experience is like?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Usually the publisher will contact me representing the author because the author will contact them with manuscripts. They'll decide they want to produce a book and they usually end up choosing the illustrator for the project, instead of the author choosing the illustrator. I know it's a little different with self-publishing sometimes, but for a traditional publisher, that's usually how it works. So I'll usually get contacted by the publisher and they'll say, "Hey, there's this project. Here's a little bit of manuscript to see if you're interested in what we're trying to do." Then if I'm lucky, then I get to have some contact with the author.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I think in some of my better projects I've had the most fun with, are ones where I've had good contact with the author and can ask them like, "Hey, what does this wombat poop supposed to look like in the wild? Can you send me any more photos of this? Or do you have any videos?" The Kaka book I did, "If You Are A Kaka, You Eat Doo Doo," I had a lot of contact with the author and she sent me all kinds of great poop videos, and photos, and things. My inbox was just crazy for a while there and it was fantastic. Every time I had a question, I was like, "Hey, so what type of plant would they be eating?" She would just fire right back, all the information I needed. It was fantastic working with someone so knowledgeable.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
In a recent book, I did some search and find ones for the ocean. It was a couple that wrote it. They've worked on the California coast for some time and knew everything about the animals in that new area. So it was great tapping into their knowledge to fill out everything fully, and fill out the environments fully that I illustrating for that and it was great. But that's not always the case though, sometimes you have limited contact with the author, and the publisher acts as a go between. You can usually get some reference images, or they can point you to a certain directions to get more information if you need more. I also ended up watching a lot of documentaries and things like that to fill in the gaps if there's something I feel like I'm missing from what I'm trying to illustrate.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Then once I've got ideas flushed out, I'll sketch everything from the manuscript into several spreads or pages, send those over to the publisher, they'll review those, we'll do revisions. Then I go to color art and then there's a whole other round of revisions and approvals, things like that. Then once I send them final arts, take it out of my hands and then they go produce it. Then eventually three to six months later, you get to see a book.
Tania Marien:
Oh, that's a lengthy process. Wow.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Yeah. It seems very fast on the illustration end because you usually only get a few months, sometimes as little as one month to finish whatever you need to for production.
Tania Marien:
Goodness. So your illustrations are digital illustrations, right? Do you paint? You don't paint your initial drafts or how do you process?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I usually sketch by hand because I still prefer to do that. I've tried sketching on the computer and it just doesn't feel right. So I still sketch by hand and scan everything in, usually into Adobe Illustrator it's where I create most of my work. A lot of my clients like that I work in vector, which means it can be scaled to any size as opposed to rastor, which is a little trickier, if you need to change the size of something. So I find Adobe Illustrator's, a little bit more flexible with that. A lot of clients prefer those types of files and that's where I learned to do that sort of thing. Again at the zoo where they needed things to be crazy huge, and being able to scale and things like that for the signage. So I just learned how to make that work in Adobe Illustrator. I just kept kept up with that, though I do experiment in Photoshop and Adobe Fresco on occasion to add a little bit of texture or other elements. More hand drawn looking elements into the work.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Wow. How do you work in your studio? You've mentioned that the turnaround is pretty quick, how do you structure your days when you have a project like a book project?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Usually we'll wake up and I keep a pretty strict calendar of what I need to do, which days, and what my deadlines are, and everything. I really like to block out most of the day, or big chunks of time of at least a few hours to work on illustrations because it's easier for me to get into it and really get in depth and finish large chunks of work when I have those big swaths of time set aside. Otherwise if it's broken up too much, you to lose focus a little bit. So I usually do best with a nice big chunk in the morning. We'll take a break, stretch out a little bit, keep my hands mobile and then I'd have some lunch and then get back into it in the afternoon, and will work until late afternoon, early evening, depending on what my deadline situation is. I usually do that for five days a week to get the illustrations done. Sometimes more, if it's a big crunch, it can be a seven day work week for months at a time, depending on what's happening.
Tania Marien:
[inaudible 00:15:35] then. How much research do you do? I mean, you mentioned that when you work with an author, you have that help with the research, but when you don't have contact with the author, how do you go about researching your project?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Usually the publisher has some sort of source material laid out for you. Whether it be images or just general information on say a specific species behavior is or something like that. But I usually will dig it even more and try to find information on various trusted websites. Or we'll look into documentaries and things like that and watch as many. If there's a specific behavior I'm trying to learn about I'll watch the documentary on that behavior or at least one, more if I can find them. I would just try to find a lot of images, them in different poses or doing different things just so I can understand how they move, what their environment is, that sort of thing. So I go as far as I need to, to learn what everything that goes into their environment or their behavior, or what have you, whatever they're trying to show in the book, or app, or what have you, whenever I'm illustrating at that time.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Today everyone is their own media company and they can present their own programs, their own services, their own work in all sorts of different ways. Even so, it's not easy to get attention or to put yourself in front of people, the people who you are trying to serve. I think you show your work beautifully on your website.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Thank you.
Tania Marien:
It's a lot of fun and it's really a breath of fresh air, I just loved that. What decisions did you make to create the website that you have right now?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Representing my work on a blank white canvas, as far as the website goes, to not have anything to distract from it. When I'm flipping through busier websites, I have a hard time focusing on the art. So I didn't really want that to be a problem with mine. I wanted it to be laid out very simply, but directly on easy access to everything I've worked on. So people can flip through and see all the pieces I worked on. They're all laid out by project so that you can select an illustration. It takes you to a wider project, shows you several illustrations from that project, and if there's more information they can get from it, or if you want to learn more about the book, I always include links to those things. So it's easy for people that are interested to find out more.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I try to make the information section on myself, a simple and easy to understand and read through because I know it can be hard if someone's just looking for specific information about me to just go and grab what they need. I just want to make it as easy for people as possible, especially if anyone's interested in hiring me, I like it to make it easy on them to do so, and make it easy for them to find my contact information and anything else they want to know.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Why I like your site, is that there's a lot of you in it, okay. I know that you are a visual artist and so of course your work is going to be the predominant feature, but there's also a lot of you in there. On an educational website, there's a lot of words. Or if you have a program, or a blog, or I'm thinking of my own website, there's not a lot of me in there and I've been trying to figure out how to put more of me in there. I know that other people are thinking the same thing, fewer words, more me.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Okay. That sort of thing, it's always a little challenging because you want people to read your words and understand what you're saying. Because what you're saying is obviously important or else you wouldn't bother to put it up anywhere. So usually the imagery I recommend is something that's related to what you would like to do to, how's the best way to put this? To illuminate, what you're trying to represent. So say you want to do a workshop on birds or something like that, having something like playful birds darting at different points in and out of your text, you could start it with image of you, whatever. So you have a specific bird you'd like to focus on, have that at the beginning and throughout you can always pepper in photos, or photos of yourself interacting with those birds, something like that.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Just so there's a little bit more of you, there's a little bit more of the subject. It gets people a bit more excited about learning about those sorts of things. Because imagery really can tell a story and grab you. Sometimes if you're just about with a wall of text to the info, even if it's the most exciting text in the world, people might not be inspired to read it. So just giving them something that indicates there's a little bit more here and it's a little bit more exciting than you think it might be helpful.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what I found also speaking with other people who work independently, they don't have a lot of pictures of themselves because they're always busy working, working.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Me too.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. "Do you have a lot of pictures of you?" "No." So the five pictures that I'm willing to put on the website of me doing something were taken over a span of years and I've used them all up. I've been working on trying to come up with more, but that is an issue when you have a workshop program or something that really requires a lot of words to explain to people who want to learn more about you. Stock photography only goes so far. When you don't have pictures of yourself at work, there's other touches and you mentioning the birds in the text, going through the text, that's a nice touch. It's something good to consider.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
If it's ever possible. I know at the zoo I would attend a lot of the education events just to photograph what was happening on stage, and just to show what we actually did during those programs. Because we always had programmed pamphlets and things that would go out to show what our programs were. Without that, I could always add illustrations of the animals or whatever in there to add interest. But people also really wanted to see our educators working with the animals. So making sure if you can recruit someone that's decent with a camera to come and photograph you while you're doing that, that's not a bad thing because it shows what you're actually doing. I think that excites people a little bit more to see the program in action. I know it's always rough to have your photo taken. I don't like it either, but it helps.
Tania Marien:
Yes, it does come in handy sometimes.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
That's why I tend to draw a lot of my stuff and don't have myself in it so much. I can get away with it a little bit more.
Tania Marien:
Let's get back to your nature coloring pages. You've set that up on Patreon. You use Patreon to engage with your community and to set up a community. How is that working for you, the platform and that approach to growing your audience?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
It's going a little slower than I'd like, I think again, just because it's a little hard for me to get the word out because I usually spend most of my days working and not so many of my days reaching out on social media, which I should do more of. So it's growing, but slowly, I think it's easier for people that produce these things on a weekly basis on Patreon, because they can reach out more continually. Those seem to work a little bit better on there, but I'm going to keep going with it because I think it has benefits, and informs people about what I'm doing, and allows people to get more involved if they would like to. So I still think there's positive things that it can be used for. I don't know that it's useful for every application. I know certain people with podcasts or comic books tend to do really well on there. But smaller things like this tend to take a little bit longer to get going. But I'm still going to keep going with it.
Tania Marien:
When did you make your first coloring page? What was the inspiration for that?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I believe it was right around last September. I just was sitting in there. I'm like, I need a personal project that I can continue to do on a monthly basis for awhile, just to make sure that I'm keeping up with my techniques and things like that. Tapping into this knowledge that I have about these animals, and environments, and things that I don't necessarily always get to show in my client work. I haven't really had a release for it yet and I want something that it takes some time to produce, but it's not so labor intensive that some of my personal projects will take weeks at a time to finish a single part of it. I was like, "I want something I can do in a couple of days that I can put up and let people enjoy quickly, and that it's not going to be a huge drain of my schedule."
Sara Lynn Cramb:
If I've got a lot of client work going and I really just wanted the educational element and with my illustrations a little bit more and to just let everything interact more playfully than it can in a lot of my other work. I've been really interested in saguaro cactuses for a while and the animals that utilize them for their homes. I was like, "This seems like a great place to start with this since I'm already interested in it and already have a lot of information anyway. So let's start there." I created that one, I made a list of about two dozen other ideas that I was interested in also working on. I was like, "All right, let's try to do this monthly and see where it goes." There's no planned end to it anytime soon. So I'm just going to keep going as long as I find it interesting, and people find it useful and helpful.
Tania Marien:
Oh yeah. No, absolutely useful. Absolutely informative and helpful. Also, I'm glad that there is no known end date, that this will continue.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
It seems to be especially helpful now with a lot of kids having to school from home. These activities that can be combined with curriculum or just something that's interesting to do that's also artistic seems to be really helpful for people. I had a few people reach out to me, just thankful that there's something that's a bit more like this, that they can incorporate into their kids curriculums and things like that. There's something a little bit different to do.
Tania Marien:
Do you have plans beyond what you're doing now? Do you have plans to maybe package these up for teachers?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I've thought about it. Once I've got enough, I wouldn't mind doing a small publication run of a collected book or something along those lines. Or do collections of the certain subjects that keep reappearing, that all fit together nicely, once I've got enough to allow that to happen, having some print run with that would be great. Just so people, if they just want a whole section on birds, or a whole section on the desert, or ocean life, or something like that. I can hopefully eventually provide whole packets of that for them to use.
Tania Marien:
What subject would you like to illustrate, but that you haven't had a chance?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Good question. I would love to do a book on invertebrate, sea life, like cephalopods and things like that. I'm absolutely fascinated by it, or just generally just deep sea creatures. There's been small a focuses on some of my books on them, but I would love to just deep dive into that full on. Because I constantly am watching documentaries or just finding articles on them and things like that. They're just absolutely fascinating, and I just want to draw them more and more. Yeah, definitely that sort of subject would be something I'm definitely interested in been doing more of, but pretty much anything having to do with wildlife. I'm happy to do.
Tania Marien:
Do you find that in children's books, the topics are, I don't want to say predictable, but they tend to be the same throughout?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I tend to focus on the heavy hitters that they know they can sell for sure.
Tania Marien:
What book needs to be written then, do you think, in your experience?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
They're starting to get into it more now, but a lot of, seems to be more historical books on figures that weren't focused on in the past. More diverse figures in history, more women in history. That's definitely something that wasn't focused on previously that they're definitely focusing on now, which is great. I feel like our conservation is getting a little bit more focus, but again, I think this that's something there that they could dive way more deeply into, especially for educating kids. I think it's something that kids are attuned to and want more information on. I've seen some titles pop up for that, but it's not as much as I would expect to see. Yeah. Things like that for sure, and books on so environmental impact and things like that would be something again, you'd think you'd see a little bit more of that you don't see as much of.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Also there tends to be focused on the same sorts of popular animals, but things that are a little bit more unusual, like the Poop Book is a rarity. I'd love to see things that just focus on these weird behaviors without making it like, "Look at these weird behaviors," and more of, "This is how these animals utilize these behaviors to survive." Things like that get a little bit more in depth and to like, "Look at this cool thing. Let's now understand what's behind this cool thing as well." I'd like to see a little bit more of that too.
Tania Marien:
Have you ever considered self publishing a book?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Not necessarily. I've been working on one for a little while now that I'm going to eventually approach publishers about. But if it doesn't go through the traditional publishing route, then I'll definitely look more into self publishing. If the coloring pages, if I do it in a print smaller runs of that, then that'll be something that could be self-published in the future. But yeah, it's definitely something I haven't spent a whole lot of time on. I've definitely helped authors with self-published projects though, with either in the design or the illustration. There seems like there's just a whole breadth of options out there that seem to change every year. So when I do go into that realm, it will probably be a big learning curve.
Tania Marien:
Are you aware of the website, Teachers Pay Teachers?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tania Marien:
Do you utilize that platform?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I have. Yeah. I have I think some maps and some other things that are like informational posters or things like that up on there along with some of the coloring pages as well, just to reach a broader audience. It seems like there's a need for just simple maps or simple diagrams and things like that that don't have a ton of information on there already so that teachers can decide what information they want to include on there, for sure. That's something I tap into more when my schedule's not super full.
Tania Marien:
When you began your freelance career more than seven years ago, what did you think it would be like?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I don't think I thought it was going to be like this. I think I was definitely interested in during the things I am now, but I didn't realize how much there would be to do. I thought it was going to be a map and animal artist, and that was about it. I didn't really know what else there was going to be on offer for me. I started doing kids' anatomy books, showing body systems and things and I was like, "Oh, this, this is very cool, and I liked doing this, and I love learning about it more than I had."
Sara Lynn Cramb:
Because you take regular anatomy in college for drawing, but it was nice to get in there and draw some organs and things like that, that I hadn't really ever considered drawing before, and a lot of earth science, and chemistry, and things like that. But it was a little bit more of a learning curve for me, but it's definitely interesting to work on and I didn't expect that I would be doing stuff like that, and I definitely enjoy it and definitely want to keep doing more things like that because I love learning about it and I love drawing it.
Tania Marien:
No, yes. Please keep doing what you're doing. Because your illustrations are so filled with information. When we stop our conversation here and they go to your website, they will understand.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I tried to pack as much info as possible into them. If it's ever possible, I try to sneak in something that's a little funny. It's not always possible, but whenever I can, I try to add a fun expression, or a weird interaction, or something like that. That is a little bit funny because I was just always drawn to that, and I love humor. I think that always makes things a little bit more interesting as well.
Tania Marien:
See, and that is why your website has so much of you in it, because you do things like that. That's wonderful. Because it isn't merely a presentation portfolio, there is a lot to keep you engaged. I know I-
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I hope so.
Tania Marien:
... click from one picture to another and I'll click at the illustrations, read about the book, go look up the book. Even to refine out more about the book, I mean, this is how I went through your website. Because that's what it prompts me to do.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
The idea of it is to keep people there long enough to really engross themselves in it. I want people to enjoy their time there, and then looking through everything, I feel like I make art to be enjoyed and to teach. So hopefully that's doing that because that's what I'd like it to do. I feel like people are a lot more engrossed in learning in that if they're enjoying what they're looking at and if they're enjoying interacting with it, and if it's not trying to slam information in their brain, if they're learning while they're also laughing at something, or enjoy looking at something, I think that's my goal. Make it tangible and more accessible for sure.
Tania Marien:
When you look over your shoulder and look at the trail you've left behind. What do you see?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I don't know. That's a good question. Hopefully one of, like it's a celebration of the natural world and everything in it. I really try to celebrate animals, and science, and nature with my work. I want it to be enjoyed, so hopefully that's what's reflected more than anything, and encouragement for other people to enjoy those sorts of things. Yeah.
Tania Marien:
Yeah. What's next for you?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I'm definitely going to keep going with the coloring pages. Lately I've been trying to work out some more illustration techniques that hopefully I can start debuting in 2021, to bring it a little bit more, even more character and real texture and things like that into my work. So I've been working on developing that and hopefully it will be somewhere where I can share it soon. But right now it's all under construction and yeah, that's what I've been working on currently, and I'm always hunting for the next exciting project to work on for sure.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
So I've got a couple of books coming out in 2021, one on the oceans and another is a dinosaur activity book that's got, I think roughly like 50 different activities on dinosaurs, including coloring, and matching, and search and find, and all kinds of things. It's the funnest dinosaur book I've gotten to work on for sure. I got to really dive deep and learn even more about dinosaurs than I already knew. Even though I was fascinated in them after Jurassic Park. It was, "I'm going to be a paleontologist," at least that's what I thought for five years. It should come out in the early part of 2021 and I'm really excited for that one because I haven't gotten to delve so deep into the dinosaur world until then. Now I just want to draw them all the time.
Tania Marien:
Is there anything that you want to say that I haven't asked you? Because sometimes I get caught up in the conversation and I don't ask the key question. Is there a key message that you would like to get out about your work, and what you do, and why you do it?
Sara Lynn Cramb:
I think one of the things that's most important that I try to remind myself about what I do, but I get overwhelmed or have a busy schedule or what have you, is that, "You chose to do this, and you're doing this for a reason." That it's to bring this education to people that either might not have access to it otherwise, or teaching them to appreciate it in a new way. Thinking about kids' books is pretty much almost anyone can afford them. They're art that almost anyone can afford and that makes it more accessible. Not everything is like that and I want the stuff I create to be easily accessible by people, by anyone that wants to learn about it. I'm always putting up, and these coloring pages are a free resource for people that want to learn about these things.
Sara Lynn Cramb:
But also still my illustrations on my site in general, I invite anyone to come look at them and learn as much as they can from them, because information should be accessible and helpful for anyone that wants the knowledge, because knowledge really can change lives, and hopefully my stuff will help contribute that a little bit. I love working with people that are specialists in these areas because I love interpreting their knowledge and adding to it in the unique way that I can. It makes a lot of it very rewarding.
Tania Marien:
To learn more about Sara, please visit the show notes here. You will find links to her website, her Patreon page, and her Redbubble store. Talaterra is a podcast for and about independent educators working in natural resource fields and environmental education. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and colleagues. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is Tania Marien.