BASEHOR, Kan. — Caitlyn Snelling drew a picture of former Kansas City Chiefs safety Dan Sorenson a few years ago.
It was in the signature colored-pencil style she’s become known for throughout large swaths of Chiefs Kingdom.
This particular drawing caught the eye of Dan Sorenson’s wife, Whitney.
“Dan Sorenson's wife reached out to me,” Snelling recalled. “She's like, ‘Oh, I love the drawing you did of Dan,’ and I was like, ‘I would love to give you a print.’”
But plans to meet in a Costco parking lot to hand off the print hit a snag.
Snelling was already headed to the meet-up location when Whitney texted her: “Something came up. Is it okay if I send my husband instead?”
Snelling agreed, half in shock she was going to meet a Chiefs player then came another text.
“If you have an extra one with you, he'll sign it,” Whitney said.
“I was like, ‘OK,’ and so I went and got an extra one,” Snelling recalled.
Drawing portraits of Chiefs players in colored pencil started as a decorating necessity at the Snelling family’s former house in Olathe and morphed into a labor of love.
“Our last house that we lived in, the basement flooded after a really bad storm, so we decided to make it into a Chiefs cave — somewhere cool to watch the games,” she said. “When we were looking at artwork for the walls, everything related to sports seems really busy and the basement was kind of dark anyway, so I didn't want all that busy stuff on the walls. I'm more of a simplistic kind of decorations person, so we couldn't find exactly what we're looking for.”
That’s when Snelling’s husband, David, had what she considered a wild idea at the time.
“My husband was like, ‘You know what? You should draw something,’ and it took him about three months of talking me into it until I finally decided to try it,” Snelling, who is largely self-taught, said. “They turned out way better than I expected.”
Those original portraits, which she started drawing in September 2019, still hang above the TV at the family’s new home in Basehor, where Snelling continues to churn out detailed, life-like colored-pencil masterpieces.
“My typical drawing takes anywhere between 80 and 200 hours,” she said.
Some take much longer, like the life-size drawing former Seattle Seahawks running back Chris Carson commissioned. He wanted Snelling to draw him jumping over a Rams defender. That piece took closer to 400 hours over three months — and turned her daughter, Josephine, into a Seahawks fan.
“It was massive, and she was maybe 2 or 3 (years old), and I would just find her just sitting there talking to the picture,” Snelling, who has attracted sizable followings on Instagram and Twitter, said. “She was very sad when I had to send it off, so I made her her own print that still hangs over her bed. She was convinced for forever that Chris was her best friend and — he's so nice — he would tell her happy birthday. But now she's a Seahawks fan for life because of that.”
Snelling’s connection to the Chiefs also is rooted in childhood.
“I grew up a military kid, so we moved all the time and didn't really have a community,” Snelling said. “... When I was really young, I did not care much about football. I just wanted to spend time with my dad, and he would be sitting there watching a game, and so I would be sitting right up under his arm.”
Snelling, who said a few art classes in high school were the extent of her formal training, never lived in Kansas City until she was an adult, but her parents are from the area and took Chiefs Kingdom wherever they were stationed.
“I draw what I like, and I'm a Chiefs fan, so, yeah, I just mostly draw Chiefs,” Snelling said.
But it was never meant to become a cottage industry — until she received more encouragement from David.
“My husband encouraged me to post them online,” Snelling said. “I posted to a few Chiefs groups and people were like, ‘Wow, you should make prints,’ ‘Can I get a copy of that?’”
She resisted at first: “For a while, I was like, ‘No, I don't think I just, I didn't plan on that.’”
But the response was so overwhelming that she relented — and now she’s a sought-after NFL artist, whose work is available online.
Of course, to 6-year-old Josephine — one of five children in the Snelling family — she’s still just mom.
Asked what she thinks about her mom’s art, Josephine said, “I love it.” She added that she’s impressed by “how it looks like a picture and I like the colors.”
Snelling has even had Chiefs players ask for her autograph, including Chris Jones at a signing event.
“He is a genuinely really nice guy,” she said. “He was super laid back, and he liked my drawing. He was actually the first person to ever ask me for my autograph, which I thought was crazy, then I didn't even end up giving him an autograph, which — sorry — but he gave me his autograph. But it was really cool to have that experience and meet him.”
After seeing a picture Snelling drew of him, Marquez Valdes-Scantling introduced her to teammates, including Creed Humphrey, as “my favorite artist” at his charity softball game.
“That was a highlight, and that was pretty cool,” she said.
But she’s still not used to being recognized in public or receiving a note from a players’ family — Patrick Mahomes’ mom, Randi — thanking her for a piece she created or having Harrison Butker’s agent reach out to buy a drawing of the kicker.
Snelling’s favorite Chiefs figure to draw is not a player — or even a player’s girlfriend. It’s actually coach Andy Reid and portraits that include the Lombardi Trophy, though not always.
“I will say the worst trophy I ever drew was after the Bucs beat us in the Super Bowl,” Snelling said. “I got a phone call at 9 o'clock the next morning, and the first thing they said was, ‘I'm really sorry.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, no, what is this?’ It was (Tampa Bay coach) Bruce Arians’ agent, and they commissioned a drawing of Bruce with the trophy. It now hangs in his living room, but I couldn't turn it down.”
There are days Snelling, who is currently working on a portrait of cornerback Trent McDuffie, has to pinch herself to make sure it’s not all a dream.
“All the time,” she said. “I have no idea how it got as big as it got and, for me, the coolest thing is I've got artwork hanging in people's houses. And people are like, ‘This is my favorite piece of artwork,’ and it's like, ‘But that's just something I drew.’”
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