LAYTON—It’s taken a few years to get here, but Jennifer Mellen is starting to see the results of her hard work. Mellen is a winner in the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest and is headed to a Hollywood awards event in April. Her art will be published in the international bestselling anthology, “L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40.”

“I’d done some commission work here and there,” said Mellen. “I found I liked illustration. I was looking at classes and programs at Salt Lake Community College and thought it sounded fun and something I’d want to do.”

Mellen got an associate degree in illustration. “It took eight years to complete with marriage and family,” she said. “When I graduated I had two little kids. I have three kids now.”

In the sixth grade, Mellen said she entered the school reflections contest and won. “They had an awards ceremony. I knew I wanted to keep doing it because it was fun. I always wanted to be an artist. It’s something my mom liked to do. She went to the college of art but it wasn’t something she pursued.”

However, Mellen said she didn’t know what direction to take. “I saw art in galleries but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to create things that are fantastic and fantasy but those are underestimated by the galleries and art shows. Museums can’t really do anything with this.”

After her third child was born, Mellen and her husband decided to start their own business, SeaDragon Cove. They produced and sold fantasy products, she said. “We saw the potential it had and I quit my job and he quit his job. We wanted to do something within our own interest.”

In the beginning it was a struggle, said Mellen. “It was tough but we did a lot of research and eventually it became more successful. We merged that business with We Geek Together Entertainment.”

While attending an artist panel she met contest Judge Brian C. Hailes. “Later on in the show people were asking me ‘why don’t you do this?’”

Mellen decided to submit her work to the contest. “The first time I got an honorable mention,” she said. “The second time I won. It was pretty great. There are three winners per quarter. I was one of three.”

Each winner gets presented a story from the writers’ side of the contest, said Mellen. “You have to make an illustration based off of the story and it will be printed in the anthology. We each compete against the others for the grand prize.”

Winning gives Mellen the opportunity to fly out to Hollywood where the grand prize will be announced. “We get a three-day workshop with a famous illustrator,” she said. “Just saying I won, this will open doors for sure.”

The pieces she submitted to the contest were ones she started in college, Mellen said. “One of the pieces is based off of Little Mermaid. She’s almost fishy with scales all over her body. She’s a creature herself but still looks like a person.”

Mellen said the prompt in her college class had been to paint something in a jar. “I painted a dragon. I thought about what he was doing in there so I gave him a book and some blankets. It made a visual story.”

The other one was a science fiction piece, she said. “It was an alien-type astronaut with a control station and space ships going by.”

For the story illustration, Mellen said she had to submit some rough sketches with ideas. “If they like the direction you’re going you make the sketch bigger. You go back and forth. Illustration is a collaboration between the artist and client essentially.”

Mellen said she enjoyed fantasy artwork when she was growing up. “Inspiration depends on your stage of life. The outside world truly comes from the imagination.”