Kaitlyn Zhang’s pen flies across the paper on her easel as a small crowd watches her work in her booth at the Festival of the Fae Harvest Market. The artist, wearing fantastical red antlers on her head, produces a portrait of the person in front of her, talking with her subject as she draws.

Within 10 minutes, Zhang creates a stylized recreation of the person’s face. Over the course of the nine-hour festival on Oct. 11, Zhang drew about six or seven portraits an hour at her booth, Mei’s Magic Mirror.

“It was awesome seeing people’s reactions when I showed them the final piece,” Zhang told The Dispatch on Wednesday, reflecting on her first experience drawing live portraits. “Not only that, but getting to know about them … Most of them said it was their first time at any kind of Renaissance fair, so it was cool to see a little bit of magic as I drew them.”

Zhang originally started creating art as a child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, almost as soon as she could hold crayons or PlayDoh, she said. She continued to develop her skills throughout her childhood, including through a move to Phoenix, Arizona. It was there, at the age of 10, that she first started drawing figures and people, she said.

After graduating high school, Zhang said, she moved back to New York to attend Parsons School of Design. During her time there, she continued to build her experience in graphic, marketing and software design. She graduated in 2023 with a bachelor’s of fine arts in Communications Design, according to her website.

After graduating college, Zhang wanted to be closer to her long-distance boyfriend, who is in the Air Force and was stationed at Columbus Air Force Base. She followed him to Columbus, where she has continued to work remotely as a graphic designer.

Over the past year, Zhang said, she started playing Dungeons and Dragons, which led her to draw fantastical characters that she and others created in her free time. But after Zhang attended the inaugural Festival of the Fae in May, she decided she wanted to volunteer to support future events, reaching out to organizer Wesley Stewart.

“Even though it was such a small fair, there were so many beautiful things,” Zhang said. “And back then, they only had one flyer and almost no media presence at all. And I was so shocked by the reach that they had from the lack of social media. So I actually reached out… and I volunteered to help with their social media and their graphic design.”

Stewart said that while the first event in May drew about 3,000 attendees, Zhang’s experience and artistic talents helped the group “triple or quadruple” its social media presence. Stewart roughly estimated that the Harvest Market earlier this month drew about 15,000 attendees, partially thanks to Zhang’s efforts.

“People are clamoring for opportunities to get their nerd on,” Stewart said. “And Kaitlyn helped get us a platform for this area. The people we were talking to – we had folks coming in not from Columbus. Not from Starkville, and West Point and Tupelo. We had people from Birmingham. We had people from Memphis. We had people from Mobile and Pensacola. We had people from Little Rock.”

The level of appreciation I have for Kaitlyn cannot be put into words, and to do so would be a disservice,” Stewart added. “And that goes for her, my whole team, my community.”

Zhang’s previous experience with graphic design was a natural fit for supporting the festival, but she had never done live portraiture until the Harvest Market. But with a vendor spot available to her, she decided to take on something “different” with her artwork.

Zhang named her booth Mei’s Magic Mirror after her Chinese name and her goal – to reflect people’s faces back to them. The booth offered Zhang’s fantasy-themed lanterns and the chance to have a live portrait created right then and there. But Zhang did not realize how well things would go, or the size of the crowd that would arrive, leading to her nine-hour drawing marathon with minimal breaks, which she called both “intense” and “fun.”

“It was super satisfying, and it’s definitely something I’d love to do again,” Zhang said.

Stewart said Zhang’s live work was an “irreplaceable” experience for festival attendees.

“To sit there at the Fae Festival, a Renaissance festival, and have an old world sketch done of you, like they would have had in the 8th to 13th century, I believe it added to the immersion and I believe it added to the magic,” Stewart said. “I don’t know how she does it, so that was magic to me.”

For those who didn’t have a chance to have their portrait drawn on Oct. 11, Stewart said, the Fae Council is planning to host a Yule Market on Dec. 20. The event will give fantasy and Renaissance lovers one more chance to gather before the end of the year, and Zhang plans to pick up her pen again at the event.

For more information on the upcoming event, follow the Festival of the Fae on Facebook. Or, for Zhang’s art, follow @kzhangdesign on Instagram.