Oakland artist creates Trump coloring book, donates proceeds to immigration nonprofit

Joey Yang Joey Yang Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Oakland artist creates Trump coloring book, donates proceeds to immigration nonprofit 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

At first, the Donald Trump drawing was just kind of a joke.

Oakland's Joey Yang, a web designer and artist, tried out a blind contour drawing technique with a picture of the Republican presidential nominee as he scrolled through the news feed on his phone. He had been uninspired by the cardboard box and other static items he had initially selected to illustrate for an art assignment, and thought he'd give Trump a shot at being his muse.

As he might have suspected, blind contour drawing of the nominee — which is executed by an artist drawing a subject without lifting pen from paper or even looking at the work in progress — came out appearing pretty hilarious.

To his "delight," the image "came out looking just really, really dumb," as Yang told Newsweek in July. After finding his Facebook friends were equally amused by his work, he decided to keep at it. He ended up creating a lot more of them, and eventually decided to share them with everyone in the form of a coloring book.

"I kept posting my drawings to Facebook, and people started commenting, 'Hey, you should turn these into a book!'" Yang tells SFGATE. "At first I thought my friends were just being polite, but enough folks asked me to that I started to think about it seriously. When someone suggested a coloring book, I was sold. And the chance actually do something about this ridiculous election was too much to pass up."

He also decided to put his skills to good philanthropic use, too, by raising money in the process for a nonprofit called International Institute of the Bay Area, which helps provide legal services to immigrants.

Yang initially hoped that the Indiegogo campaign for the institute would reach $1,000. That, he thought, would allow him to write a nice check for the cause, and print out some coloring books for those buying it (he is also giving away PDFs of the book for free). However, he soon found that he seriously underestimated the public interest. Only about a day after the Indiegogo went live, it doubled its fundraising goal. Today, Yang's cause has netted more than $7,300.

"I figured $1,000 was the minimum I needed to make a print run, and everything on top of that has just been gravy," he says. "IIBA is an awesome organization and I think the message that immigrants make America great resonated with people."

Now, with only a short time remaining before the election, Yang is hopeful that his illustrations may have inspired people to register to vote — a request he makes for anyone downloading the PDF for free — or at least to think differently about the difficulties immigrants face.

"I chose IIBA because they're local, and are primarily staffed, managed, and overseen by people of color," he adds. "Their work directly benefits real immigrants here across the Bay. They provide free or low-cost immigration legal services to anyone in need, and the main thing separating immigrants from the legal help they need is usually knowing that organizations like IIBA exist and are able to help."

Read Alyssa Pereira's latest stories, and follow her on Twitter at @alyspereira. Send her news tips at apereira@sfchronicle.com.