My Personal Curriculum: Artist and Rising Teacher Kelley Bren Burke

f you ask artist and Skillshare teacher Kelley Bren Burke how she found her way into digital art, she’ll tell you a truth she holds with zero shame: “I fell in love with collage because I can’t draw.” For a long time, creativity felt like something she admired from a distance. Kelley spent twenty years managing a Barnes & Noble, scraping snow off her windshield before sunrise and gearing up for six-day work weeks that left little oxygen for anything artistic. She loved books, loved people, but the nonstop retail grind wore her thin. As an introvert and a creative-at-heart, she knew something in her life didn’t match who she was becoming. That changed in 2017, when she bought her first iPad and downloaded Procreate. She wasn’t sure where she fit creatively yet, but she was willing to learn. “At the time, I thought I’d become a hand letterer,” she says. “So I dove into Skillshare classes. I experimented with everything.” In the spring of 2020, Kelley published her first class as a Skillshare teacher, all while continuing to hone her own creative gifts. As a student and teacher, she explored subjects like hand lettering, illustration, and animation in Procreate.