Mary Jane Begin is an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator. In addition to her role as Adjunct Professor and Internship Advisor for the Illustration Department at Rhode Island School of Design where he has taught for 29 years, she is also a Visiting Associate Professor and the Chair of Illustration in the M.F.A for Children’s Literature at Hollins University. Mary Jane lectures, creates workshops and exhibits her artwork around the globe and teaches online courses for LinkedInLearning.com and CreativeLive.com. She’s worked with Celestial Seasonings, Mead Johnson and Disney, and has received awards from the Society of Illustrators, multiple Awards of Excellence from Communications Arts, the Irma Simonton Black Award, and the Critici Erba Prize at the Bologna Book Fair. Mary Jane won the prestigious Bing Xin Children’s Literature Award for her picture book, Willow Buds, The Tale of Toad and Badger. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout the country with one-woman shows at Books of Wonder Gallery in New York and Beverly Hills, at the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, the RISD Museum, Society of Illustrators (NY), The DeCordova Museum, and Storyopolis in LA., and her latest solo exhibitions were at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University and the Design Society in Shenzhen, China. For more information found at: www.maryjanebegin.com ONLINE TEACHING EXPERIENCEIn addition to her online courses with CreativeLive and LinkedinLearning, Mary Jane has worked with students abroad both developing custom courses and individual one on one teaching.  She has covered a variety of topics for Illustration including: Visual Storytelling, Portfolio Preparation, Sequential Illustration for Books, Visual Development (for Animation, Book and Gaming) and has provided one on one consultation for individual students to help them formulate a strong portfolio in the areas of project development, composition, character development, color, consistency, style development and world building.