My Personal Curriculum: Artist and Rising Teacher Kelley Bren Burke

If 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.

Getting Started with Digital Collage in Procreate

One day, Kelley decided to tackle Create Collages That Tell a Story | A Procreate Class by Peggy Dean. Collage wasn’t something she was specifically drawn to. She simply liked Peggy, had the afternoon free, and figured, why not?

But that class lit a fuse.

A surreal digital collage features a woman walking barefoot across sweeping desert dunes toward a modern city skyline. To her left, an elevated highway cuts through the sand, and above her, colorful ski-lift chairs float through a star-filled sky. Two vintage swimmers hover overhead as if diving through the air, blending dreamlike elements with urban scenery. — One of Kelley's first digital collage creations, from Peggy Dean's Skillshare class, Create Collages That Tell a Story | A Procreate Class

Kelley created her first digital collage that day. Procreate recorded the exact moment: June 18, 2021. Something about the mix of imagery, play, and storytelling unlocked a door she hadn’t even known was there.

“I fell completely in love with collage,” Kelley shares. “Those early pieces still mean so much to me because I can see the spark happening in real time.”

Her next stop was Collages on Your iPad in Procreate by Liz Kohler Brown, where she pushed deeper into style, texture, and digital layering. The collages she made in that class became early landmarks on the new creative path she didn’t even realize she’d started walking.

Those two classes rearranged her creative life.

From Skillshare Student to Online Art Teacher

Kelley didn’t just take classes—she kept following the momentum. She started joining collage-prompt challenges like Februllage and Paris Collage Collective, discovering how much she loved responding to prompts and working within playful constraints.

As her love for collage grew, her teaching shifted too.

Her 2022 class, Explore Collage Art in Procreate: 7 Prompts to Spark Your Creativity, has become her most popular. Built around the joy of turning simple prompts into surprising artwork, it remains one of the classes students talk to her about the most.

Colorful collage-style graphic featuring cut-out letters spelling “COLLAGE,” combined with vintage photos, bright shapes — digital collage artwork created in Procreate. — Kelley has now taught thousands of students everything from Procreate to Etsy to Canva, but digital collage will always be where her teaching story started.

Kelley has now taught thousands of students everything from Procreate to Etsy to Canva, but digital collage will always be the creative spark that changed her direction.

Kelley’s Personal Curriculum

These are the three classes that truly reshaped Kelley's creative direction:

Create Collages That Tell a Story by Peggy Dean
Collages on Your iPad in Procreate by Liz Kohler Brown
And Kelley’s own Explore Collage Art in Procreate: 7 Prompts to Spark Your Creativity

“I can trace everything I do now back to those early Skillshare experiments, and to one unexpected afternoon where I clicked on a class just because it looked fun.” (Kelley Bren Burke)

Digital collage artwork of a clawfoot bathtub on a city rooftop with a woman’s legs in heels, a small black dog, pink flowers, and a star-filled sky layered with handwritten script. — Kelley fell deeper into the digital collage obsession with Liz Kohler Brown's Collages on your iPad in Procreate class

Building a Creative Career

Today, Kelley works from home designing collage kits, making surreal art, running a long-standing Etsy shop, and teaching over 7,500 students on Skillshare. Her assistant is a fluffy puppy named Maisie, who isn’t much help with deadlines but is excellent at reminding her to take breaks and play.

She’s also helping other artists find their spark—most recently through Free + Create, a collaborative online event she organized with a collective of talented artists, including five other Skillshare teachers. More than a thousand artists joined in. The next one is already in the works for February 2026.

If there’s a through line to all of it, it’s this: Creative paths don’t reveal themselves all at once. They unfold, class by class, experiment by experiment, moment by moment.

Kelley’s creative path took shape with digital collage. Yours might start somewhere else entirely.

But if you’ve ever wondered whether there’s room in your life for creativity—or whether you could even build a life around it—Kelley’s story is proof that you can.

Sometimes all it takes is the right afternoon. And the right class.

Written By

Alison Kendrick

Alison is a digital content strategist by day, and a podcaster + tabletop RPG enthusiast by night.