This month we had a chance to catch up with one of Every Day Original’s original team member, and consistent sell-outs. His work sells out, he makes no compromises. You know what we meant.

 
Rob is a painter and illustrator whose work focuses on mythology, folklore, and the cosmos. He consistently creates stellar best-selling work for Every Day Original, and has some deep views on making work and learning as play.

 
Find out even more at his website.

 

1. Tell us a little bit about growing up near Chicago. Was art a part of your childhood or something you developed later? Was there any childhood inspiration that you carry with you today?
I always feel like I’m supposed to say I was born with a pencil in my hand, but it’s really not the case. Sure, I did some crayon drawings as a kid, but my family is not artistic. I started getting into art in a serious way in high school. I wasn’t particularly encouraged to make art into a career so it was a leap I made when college application time came around. I did do a lot of camping, hiking, and road trips when I was a kid and I think this helped to foster my appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, which in turn helped lead me to oil painting. I took a year off after high school to hike the Appalachian Trail. I got over halfway (Maine to West Virginia) before I had to stop because of a broken (stress fractured) foot.

 

2. Did you go to school to hone your artmaking? Did you graduate in the field you went to study? Do you work now in the field from which you graduated?
I’m not sure I knew why, specifically, I went to art school. I was considering architecture because it seemed practical or graphic design because I didn’t know there was a difference between that and illustration. Let’s just say I had a lot to learn, but I figured out at one point that, personally, I needed to learn to paint in oil. So I went into illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and got hooked. Now I’m both an illustrator and a gallery artist.

 

3. People often ask me what kind of work we look for at Every Day Original. Just as often, I point to your work. These aren’t simply studies, they are small finished works, polished both technically and narratively. When you approach a small work, how does this differ from a larger piece, if at all? Do you have a clear idea of when to put the brushes down and call it done?
Well, thanks! While I know my EDO works are more polished than what most people think of as a study, that is still what I consider them to be. I often think of the numerous studies of J.C. Leyendecker and how he would work out so many aspects of his picture in studies, including much of his brushwork, so that when he painted his final picture he could then take it a step further. Leyendecker never intended to sell his studies so he didn’t usually finish off the edges, but if I’m going to do a study I don’t mind putting in a little extra time to make it a worthwhile miniature. Because of this, my process doesn’t differ much moving from small to large. In any size, my process is fairly well planned and the studies are one step in that process. I prefer the look of alla prima (first pass) painting, so in order to get it right the first time I have to plan out as much as possible. If my planning is successful then I won’t have to go back and fix things with a second layer, but I will paint a second layer if I have to.

 

4. Jane McGonigal, noted game/social scientist/researcher/designer, in her TED talks and book “Reality Is Broken” she talks about “fiero.” In her words, “Fiero is what we feel after we triumph over adversity. You know it when you feel it – and when you see it. That’s because we almost all express fiero in exactly the same way: we throw our arms over our head and yell.” Now, I know you to be fairly reserved in demeanor, polite and well-spoken. What, on this earth, gives you that feeling of fiero such that you stand up and yell (or want to)?
Ha, I never feel as reserved as I seem to come off. Painting certainly provides plenty of these moments. When an area glows just right or I find the right descriptive brush mark for a specific passage I am known (only to myself) to hold my mahl stick over head with two hands and howl at my easel like a Tatooine sand person. This is the cultural reference that an adolescence drenched in Star Wars has left me to be reminded of when I have those hands-over-head moments. But, as a lover of life, I often get a similar feeling when I see the setting sun falling across towering cumulous clouds or when I feel a perfect summer breeze. These moments may not be triumph over adversity, but they are worthy of hands-over-head celebration none the less. The sand person only seems to come out in studio though, I guess I am reserved.

 

5. Could you tell us more about your process as a painter? What are some of your favorite parts, and parts that you could do without?
The act of pushing oily mud around on a surface is probably, unsurprisingly, my favorite part. Seeing something come to life is great, but every part of the process is important. I start, as most of the illustrators I know do, with thumbnail sketches and plenty of other idea generating scribbles in my sketchbook. A thumbnail I like gets worked up in a larger sketch and I gather reference materials. Using my gathered reference, my sketch is then refined on successive layers of transparent vellum paper until I’m happy with the result. Each layer pulling forward the best parts of the last and continuing to develop the areas that still need work. Then I scan the sketch and make a rough digital study in Photoshop to work out value and color. There really is no match for digital when it comes to the ability to try things out and change colors quickly. Next, I transfer the sketch to a small board which will become my oil study. This is where I work out what pigments I’m going to use and how I might lay down my brushwork. Then the sketch is transferred again to a larger board where I will paint my final image, informed by all of the previous steps.

 

6. You’re a fixture at Illuxcon, and yet you now focus more on gallery/fine art work. What caused you to look in this direction? How would you advise someone looking to move from illustration to gallery work?
I do what works. My career direction has developed somewhat organically since graduating from school. Rather than immediately trying to get illustration jobs with my mediocre school portfolio, I lived on the cheap, got a part time job at a frame shop to pay the bills and spent all the rest of my time producing new personal pieces for my portfolio. Yet, I was very slow and too precious with each new piece to take many risks. I still had a lot to learn and there were few places to do it before IMC, Illuxcon, and other such events existed. So, even with a decent work ethic, my portfolio grew slowly. A year or two after graduation I began attending a weekly life painting portrait group. This really loosened me up and gave me the room I needed to experiment with and hone my painting skills. My drawing skills also needed a lot of work, but while living on a budget it was hard to afford too many life painting/drawing groups per week, so instead I became a regular tea drinker at a local coffee shop and spent every other night drawing people drinking lattes and staring at their laptop screens.

 

I always intended to do more marketing of myself as an illustrator once my work got to a consistently publishable quality. Yet somehow it has always seemed more important (and more fulfilling) to just produce my next painting idea and make it better than the last. This strategy left me with a lot of personal work laying around but no income. For many years, I was consistently getting rejected from Spectrum, and all of the portraits I was painting were starting to stack up. So I began to look for other competitions to enter where some of my work might be seen. I started to participate in fine art competitions like the Oil Painters of America, Portrait Society of America, Oil and Acrylic Painter’s Society, the American Impressionist Society, and the Art Renewal Center. I was expecting the same rejection I faced with Spectrum so I was amazed to suddenly be getting accepted and receiving awards. I do illustration work when it comes along, but lately gallery work has been offering me more opportunities.

 

As far as advice goes, I think it’s just about finding the right fit. Get to know what each industry is looking for and try the one that fits best. If nothing fits, see if you can forge a new path. Things are changing all the time. But for anyone thinking that galleries will offer complete freedom of subject matter, it’s not necessarily the case. For one thing, figures are a difficult subject matter to sell and there are comparatively few galleries that carry figure paintings.

 

7. How do you navigate being a fine artist and an illustrator? Is there synergy between the two fields, do they work together or create dissonance?
My primary interest in art has always been in figures. I’ve never minded what context these figures exist in so long as I’m able to make them richly emotional and narrative, which I find to be crucial to my happiness with them. But left to my own devices, these contexts have always been somewhere between the high fantasy of most publishing work and the from-life, non-fiction recording typically found in traditionally focused fine art galleries and markets. I like myth, allegory, and a strange or unexpected twist brought to an old theme, but I was having trouble finding a way to market these ideas. For a while, I began to make two portfolios that catered to each end of my interests, high fantasy and non-fiction.  But I think things are beginning to change in the art world. Perhaps because of forces like Illuxcon and the imaginative category at the Art Renewal Center, perhaps there are larger cultural forces, but I think the mild fantasy that I like best is becoming more accepted in both of the areas where I was splitting my time and work before.

 

8. One of the challenges we face as artists is in keeping things fresh. We don’t want the market to get tired of us. Do you agree? If you do, then how do you find new ideas and how do you decide which ones to pursue?
One of my greatest obstacles/assets as an artist is that I’m not content to just make pretty pictures. Not because I’m afraid people would get tired of them, but because I want to be able to look back and feel like I did something that made a difference in some way, or at least that I tried to. There’s nothing wrong with pretty-pictures for their own sake. Most of the images that I love, as well as many of the paintings that I make, could fall into this category, but I’ve always had a strong desire to do good and make a positive impact on the world. So, to truly be happy with my body of work it has to be saying something, whether that something be educational, inspiring, or relevant to current events and topics. This pursuit has slowed me down a lot over the years. It takes me a long time to come up with concepts that I think have a good message, but I feel better about my work in the end and I hope this contributes to people’s interest in my art.

 

9. You pull a lot from myths and folklore into your work. Is there an end goal for you with this? What do you hope to accomplish?
I do take great interest in the myths that have captivated humanity throughout our history and that shape our behavior even today. I try to understand their origins and how the myths have evolved over time, shaped by what their proponents both did, and did not know during each passing age. While I find the mystery and poetry of mythology inspiring in a way that I suspect is inseparable from humanity, I think that the popular mythologies of today are outdated and doing us more harm than good. To this end, I want my work to pursue the question of “what is the mythology of today and the future?” Or in other words, “in what way do we as humans poetically relate to the universe that we find ourselves in?”

 

10. Do you have an alter ego? Tell us more, or make one up.
I spend a lot of my non-painting time trying to learn new things. I like learning about everything, but especially anything relevant to how to make a positive impact on the world. We are so lucky to have the internet available to us and I try to make full use of it. I read articles, watch lectures, TED talks, videos and documentaries. I try to keep up on the latest renewable energy technologies, efforts to alleviate poverty, studies on sociology and economics, particle physics, history and as I said before, humanity’s various mythical traditions. I’m certainly not an expert in any of these topics, but I like to stay informed to the best of my abilities, and when I can, pass on information that might cut through the everyday gridlock of black vs white.

 

11. You’ve described your primary hobby as learning. How does learning and researching play into how you create images?
Since I want my work to make some positive impact, staying informed on a range of topics is important to help me figure out what I want my paintings to say. Translating what I learn into pictures, particularly into interesting pictures that I want to make, is a difficult and slow task, but it feels important to me. I often feel incredibly limited in what I can do and the impact my paintings could ever have, but it would be worse to not try.

 

12. You have an incredible work ethic. There’s this romanticized idea of the fine artist/illustrator working around the clock year-round eschewing social contact and just creating creating creating. However, there’s plenty of research showing the important of breaks, even short ones to move around, go for a walk, see the sun. What’s a typical work day for you? What kinds of things do you do to rest the mind and brushes?
Well, my work ethic isn’t always stellar. I don’t want anyone to be comparing their insides to my outsides. It may make it sound like I’m working more when I’m trying to learn things in my spare time, since some people might consider that work, but it’s what I enjoy. The fact about trying to learn things on the internet is that there are plenty of distractions and I’m certainly not immune to the gravitational pull of cat videos. These distractions do provide some quick breaks, but I make an effort to take plenty of walks too. If I have time, I’ll spend an evening sketching at a coffee shop or an afternoon exploring a nearby park or preserve. Above all, seeing good friends on somewhat regular basis keeps me mentally prepared for what’s ahead.

 

13. You have firmly established yourself on Every Day Original, with both your content and ability to sell work. Can you tell us more about your process, when it comes to making a piece for everydayoriginal?
More about my process, um… Paint isn’t always opaque enough to cover in one pass, so I often lay down a few thin washes of acrylic on my board before I begin with oil to get the values closer to where they eventually need to be. Usually, anything but the thickest of strokes isn’t as opaque as one might assume, so it helps to have some kind of an imprimatura layer, even if it’s thin. As I said before, my process is fairly similar whether I’m working large or small. All that really changes is the brush size and how much information I have to work from (whether I already have a study done or not).

 

14. What are you looking forward to most in your career within the next year or so? anything we should look out for in the future?
I’m excited to continue fleshing out and adding to my astronomy series, which I feel is accomplishing some of my long term goals. But I’m also really enjoying the mermaid series, which is liberating because I’m allowing myself to make some of those just-pretty-pictures that I haven’t allowed myself to make in the past. I do have a large and exciting commission in the works for 2017 but I’m still in the idea stage for that one, so there’s not much I can reveal about it yet.

 

15. Any last thoughts?
Ever wonder who named the planets? …Never stop learning!

 

 

ORIGINALS FROM ROB

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Kelly McKernan is a fine artist and illustrator who creates paintings of ethereal and fantastical women. We are so excited to have her as a featured artist on Every Day Original.

Be sure to check out her website, follow on her facebook, or continue reading our interview where we discuss the business of art, education beyond art school, and navigating gallery art and illustration.

 

1. Could you tell us quick information about your background and how you came to be an artist?

I was one of those kids that always wanted to be an artist. Thankfully, my parents were really supportive of my creative tendencies and let me go to summer art camps, experiment with paints, markers, and even chalk pastels (which, if you have carpet at home, I don’t recommend giving to a child unsupervised).

Things got going in a more serious direction in high school. I had an excellent art teacher that really set a strong foundation and she ended up inspiring me to pursue a degree in art education to become an art teacher myself. I went to a college in my same state that offered the program, but after a year, I decided to switch to a studio art major. I enjoyed painting too much and felt that I could somehow figure out how to make a career out of it instead.

I graduated in 2009 and I spent the following three years balancing part-time jobs with my emerging gallery career. In mid-2012, I was able to go full time after moving from Atlanta, Georgia to Nashville, Tennessee.

 

2. You also took a course at SmArt School, but you already had a huge following online and a successful gallery career. Why go back to school, and why online? We know “learning is its own reward,” but there is always another piece. What let you know it was time to get back in the student chair?

So, here’s the thing: while in my final year of art school, it became apparent that illustration was an actual, viable career option. It sounds silly, but I really had no clue. I was in a very insular, traditional program. I only became aware of contemporary artists with an “illustrative” style, such as James Jean, by doing my own research online. I picked up his Fables Covers book that year, brought it to my favorite professor, and he scoffed at the style. I came to find out that many of those I looked up to treated the word “illustration” or even “illustrative” to describe a style, like something dirty and beneath whatever higher form of expression they were there to teach (I sound so bitter, don’t I?). At the time, I had already veered off into my own developing style and pretty much spent my final year creating work for gallery commitments rather than assignments. I was really stubborn and wanted to prove that I could make a living with my developing “illustrative” style at the time.

When I took my career full-time in 2012, I felt that I had developed a formula for my work, had a recognizable style, and that my work was gaining traction in the gallery circuit. All the while, though, I had this nagging feeling that I needed to expand into illustration, but I had absolutely no idea how to accomplish that. Illustration has a language of its own, and it felt completely foreign to me. This was really frustrating since I’m typically a resourceful person and feel capable of self-teaching. But I just couldn’t grasp the concept to bringing my style over to the side of illustration.

For a while, I had played with the idea of returning to school for an MFA in Illustration. A couple of professors at SCAD Atlanta had encouraged me to do so, but I just couldn’t get past the amount of debt I’d be committing to. At some point, SmArt School popped up in my Facebook feed and it seemed like the perfect answer. I actually had just the right amount of money for the full mentorship leftover from an educational trust fund set up by my grandparents. So, I signed up for the Fall 2013 semester.

I chose Dan Dos Santos for a few reasons – his style was very different from mine, he works traditionally, I was interested in book covers, and his subject matter isn’t far off from what I was interested in exploring. What I really needed, most of all, was to be walked through how to take my current style and gallery art-tendencies and appropriately apply it to the realm of sci-fi and fantasy illustration.

As far as returning to the “student chair,” it was all about having an open mind. For three years, I had been making my personal goals as an artist and, as I said, I had found a formula. That’s relieving, but also a little unnerving – is having a formula really a good thing? My work was getting stagnant and I stopped really challenging myself. And when I did want to challenge myself, I didn’t know how to. So, stepping back into the place of a student had me put aside any pride from success that I felt as a gallery artist. By doing that, I learned more in a few months than I felt I had in years spent in college. That one SmArt school class really changed everything for me and I feel that even my gallery work is so much better for it.

 

3. You are making a transition now from gallery work to illustration. Is it correct to call it a transition or are you simply expanding? Tell us why the move and/or expansion?

I’m not sure that I’m transitioning entirely, but I’m definitely expanding. I think I’m in a unique position right now, actually. I enjoy working with galleries. I’m participating in a lot of fun themed shows and have had a couple of solo exhibitions, with a couple more around the corner. As a gallery artist, your goal is a solo show with a prestigious gallery and representation. However, you’re also sharing a large commission (usually 50%), and sometimes your work might not sell at all. You can be a total slave to the gallery system if you really want to. A lot of fine artists are okay with that. They don’t know how to market their work, or just don’t want to, and they let the gallery earn their commission for doing that part. However, I really enjoy marketing my work. Social media is a powerful tool when you learn to use it properly.

So, my unique position? I could probably quit being a gallery artist and sell my original paintings myself and make more money than I do by working with galleries. Private commissions usually pay a lot more as well. This is almost entirely due to social media. I have enough of a following right now that I’m able to directly reach a mass of people that enjoy my work, and a few in there are keen on supporting it financially. This is actually my long term plan regarding gallery work. I’m turning down more shows and only accepting the ones I’m really interested in being a part of. There are a few galleries I truly love working with, and I’m going to maintain those relationships as long as they’ll have me, but I’m otherwise going to slow down.

In the meantime, I’m going to focus more on illustration work. I’m really an illustration baby… I haven’t yet had a real illustration job with an art director. I’ve only just gotten to know a bit of the sci-fi and fantasy illustration community and attended SFAL 4 (my first convention!).

 

4. What do you see for the future of your work as an illustrator and fine artist? In your wildest dream, what big project are you pursuing?

Ideally, I want to see it split up like this: 25% gallery work/personal work, 25% private commissions, and 50% illustration. I think that the variety will keep me on my toes and

As far as a dream project, that’s so hard to say! I think I’d be pretty thrilled to get to do illustrations for my favorite fairy tales.

 

5. Let’s talk about family, you have one, it is growing! You have said that motherhood changes how you work and manage your time/career. I can relate, now with 2 small ones at home efficiency is the word of every. single. day. That said, has motherhood affected the content or narratives of your illustrations and paintings? If you’ve noticed changes would you attribute it to motherhood, or just a maturing and evolution of your work?

Oh my gosh, efficiency is definitely key! As far as it effecting content or narrative, I don’t really think so. I’m still interested in the same things, but there have been definite changes otherwise! I would say it comes directly from my time management, now that I have less time than ever to create. I’m taking more time on prepping a piece, gathering reference, doing studies, and making sure I’m going into a new piece at least 75% sure of how it’ll look when it’s completed. Previously, I was pretty lazy about this and realized that my work suffered because that. Since every minute I have available to work really has to count, I don’t want it wasted on a piece that I’m not happy with, or have at least learned from.

So, consequently, I feel like my work has matured a lot in the last year since becoming a mother and learning to work around my daughter’s ever-changing schedule and demands.

 

6. Is there more to you than work and family? Are you a political science hobbyist, backyard rocket engineer, undiscovered world-reknowned pastry chef?

Ha! Well, my napping skills rival that of my daughter’s. Beyond that, I really enjoy playing table top games with my husband (and family and friends whenever we find the time). Some of my favorites are Munchkin, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and I’m really enjoying a couple new ones we just picked up, which are Coup and Five Tribes. Lately, I’ve been trying to allow myself to do something that’s entirely for me, since as a work-from-home freelancer and mom, it’s easy to feel guilty if I’m not using ALL of my free time to work. So, I’ve picked up a few games from Steam and I just finished playing Transistor, which was GORGEOUS. I’m definitely planning some fan art. I’ve got Child of Light to tackle next.

 

7. Back to art: Could you walk us the through the process of a piece? What steps do you take visually and what steps do you take conceptually/narratively?

It totally depends on the project – whether it’s for a themed gallery show, a personal piece, or a privately commissioned painting.

If the piece is conceptually or narratively driven, I begin with a lot of notes and a breakdown of symbolism and visual cues to create. From there, I work out a few small thumbnails to work out a basic composition with the subject matter in mind. If I need very specific reference, I’ll hire a model, or I’ll search for similar stock photos (deviantart.com is an excellent resource for this) and “frankenstein” what I need.

If the piece is more personal, and I don’t have a clear idea to begin with, it usually starts with the reference. I hire a model for my fine art work once or twice a year and take several hundred photos of various poses. I’ll return to those folders to find something that strikes my interest and that usually inspires the rest of the piece. The way the model’s arms are folded or the angle of her neck might tell me the beginnings of a story, and I move from there, building small, rough sketches to work out ideas, which I then narrow down into a composition.

Both processes then meet at the same place – I print out my reference images, sketch over the final surface, and then pick up whatever media I’m planning to do the piece in.

 

8. Rather than ask how you price your work, we would love to know how you budget your money and time. Do you have a goal salary and work to make enough work to fill that number? How do you approach the business of being an artist?

I am terrible with money, so I leave the money management to my husband. Because he’s also a freelancer, how we set our financial goals every month are pretty much the same. We know the minimum that we need to meet to pay the mortgage and the bills, buy groceries, etc. I make about 2/5ths of our combined income, so I have a minimum goal to make every month. Most months, I reach that goal without having to stress too much about it. The majority of my income is through print sales in my online shop. I also know when to expect payment from the sale of a painting through a gallery or EDO, so I factor that in if sales are slow in my shop.

I also keep a close eye on my income and expenses with bookkeeping software from Godaddy, which I pay $10 a month for. I make sure all of my business-related expenses are done through Paypal, but I also am paid through Stripe (via Storenvy, which my shop is through), so I have both accounts kept up with through the software and income and expenses are both automatically kept track of. Any expenses are also made through Paypal, and any in-person purchases are made with the Paypal debit card to keep things simple. If I’m paid via a check for the sale of a piece through a gallery, I just make sure to enter that manually and save the stub in a folder of physical receipts. All of this makes tax time a million times easier.

As far as the business of being an artist, I feel like that comes very naturally to me. Ever since I was a kid, I was trying to find ways to monetize my interests and skills. I sold drawings on index cards and handmade bookmarks at our summer garage sales, made jewelry in middle school and sold them on the bus, and I even bought packs of candy at Costco to sell to my friends at school for a profit, haha. So, finding ways to do what I love for a living is a really fun challenge and I’m always looking for ways to do this better in order to maintain my dream career.

 

9. Where and how do you sell your work? How did this come together for you? Is it together?

The majority of my original artwork is created for and sold in various galleries. If it hasn’t sold through them by a certain amount of time, it’s returned to me and I list it in my online shop. I sell prints of most of my work in my online shop too, though as a general rule, I don’t make a print of an original piece until it has sold.

I began selling my work online in early 2008 when I started getting print requests of new work I was creating while in college. It felt odd to be doing that while still in school, but I found that the majority of people that enjoyed what I was creating didn’t have the expendable income for original pieces, so prints were, and still are, a great alternative. Doing this required me to work out some marketing skills and find ways to advertise that I had prints available. Things started out pretty slow, but once I had a hit piece in 2009 that garnered a lot of attention, I figured out that I could offer limited edition prints and raise the prices. People really seem to react to a print being limited, so those sell pretty well.

Things have picked up a lot in the last year and I’m fulfilling print orders a few times a week. I try to be really nice to my mail lady, since she has to come pick up a bunch of shipping tubes from my front porch often.

I’m always trying to learn and improve upon how I handle my shop. One of the hardest things to gauge is interest in a piece becoming a limited edition print and whether it’ll actually sell, because once I commit to offering it, that number of prints needs to sell. Working out shipping issues is tough too, but after a bit of trial and error, I have that pretty streamlined. Pretty soon, I’m doing a complete overhaul of my online shop and taking print production entirely into my own hands in order to have a greater profit margin since it’s a big part of my income.

 

10. In your portfolio you have a lot of original art, and you also have work that references well known myths, fairytales, as well as IP-based art (some call it “fan art”). Why work with other people’s ideas? Do you think that diminishes the value of the work? Why or why not?

That’s a really good question. Fan art and my original art feel very different to me, but all fan art (and art based on existing stories) have an origin before they go into the filter of how I want to visually interpret my experiences with them. Some of the story and character derived work that I’ve done has happened because I’m really passionate about it and want to get it out of my system. It’s fun and, frankly, sometimes easier and less pressure and therefore a break from some of my heavier, conceptual fine art work. As far as whether it diminishes the value of the work, I’m not really sure. I always feel a little odd selling any of that work, but when I know it’s going to someone that loves the character or story the piece is based on, I feel okay about it, because then it’s a shared experience, and I know they wouldn’t spend money on my interpretation unless they appreciated it too.

Most of the fan art paintings I’ve done have been for themed gallery shows with one of my favorite galleries, Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles. They’re known as the first pop culture themed art gallery, and it’s been a dream working with them and getting some fantastic opportunities (and excuses!) to create work for their shows.

 

11. You mentioned having synesthesia and being legally blind. If you do indeed paint with treble and bass, how can you see what you sound like? Kidding aside, tell us more about this and how you move past it to create your work.

Ha! I’ve never thought of them that way! Well, being legally blind is definitely a hindrance because I have to wear RGP contact lenses (a slightly more comfortable version of hard lenses), and my vision is 20/30 at best, even while wearing them. My eyes dry out very quickly and my vision is often very blurry by the end of the day from wearing these contacts, so working at night is difficult.

As far as the synesthesia, the strongest form I have of it is music – color, and it’s lead me to wonder whether what I’m listening to while painting or constructing a piece influences my color palette at all. I’m really unsure, because I’ve learned to tune it out for the most part, but I do believe that it gave me a strong sense of color use growing up and definitely influenced my direction as an artist.

 

12. Your work focuses heavily on the female figure, often inside a narrow set of archetypes (visually and narratively). Is this a conscious decision to represent this specific type of woman, or do you just naturally favor this imagery in your paintings/illustrations? Is there a narrative you have about how you portray women?

It’s never been a very conscious decision until recent years as I learned more about myself as a person. In my earlier years of developing my style, especially between 2009-2011, every piece felt like an exploration of my character flaws. I was heavily idealistic and learning from experience the dangers and disappointments that result from that. I was aware that every piece then was a bit of a self-portrait. From 2011-2013, I began to feel more confident, grounded, and steady. My idealistic nature had been purged. That began to reflect itself in my work, I think. I tried to explore that with my solo show work in 2013, titled “Cognitive Dissonance.” Since then, as my interests are favoring illustration, my personal work is less about discovering and reflecting upon my own nature and more about the experienced female, maybe. I’m not entirely sure. A lot of these things I don’t really understand until some time has passed. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a whole lot of opportunities to explore that with my personal work lately. However, I still default to my preference for painting women because that’s who I am, and what I understand. I hope that makes sense – it’s not something I’ve ever been able to put into words succinctly.

 

13. As an artist who has a foundation with traditional materials, and creates mostly traditional original pieces–what is your relationship to digital artwork? Is there a pressure to learn those tools, or is it not on your radar as an artist working in galleries?

For a while, there was definitely some pressure to be a functioning digital artist. I gave it a good shot in early 2013, but I just became overly frustrated that I couldn’t execute the same movements on a computer screen as I could on paper. I know it’s just another medium, but the barrier of the screen has been really hard to reconcile for me. So, now it’s just a tool for touching up scanned work, working with my reference photos, and occasionally working out a color palette.

 

14. If there was one message you wanted your audience/the viewer to get when they see and experience your work what would it be?

Hmm. That’s not something I think too hard about, because I don’t want to limit the viewer’s interpretation of my work, and I don’t want to tell them how they should feel when they see it. I only like to give a few clues via symbolism and the titles of my work (which I spend a lot of time carefully choosing). This has been really satisfying when I’ve receive really personal and heartfelt emails from people that tell me that a piece of mine affected them strongly in one way or another. One that really stands out is a response to a piece of mine called “Entropy” that someone felt really touched by because she was in remission from cancer, and her interpretation of the piece was comforting and personal to her. That’s really special to me, the relationship a viewer can have to something I create, when my own intentions and interpretation of the work totally doesn’t matter in the end. I was there for the journey, but once it’s complete, it’s out of my hands.

 

15. What are you most excited for, for the rest of 2015? What lessons have you learned from the first half of the year and what new practices are you taking on?

This has been an absolutely incredible year thus far! The first half has been all about learning to manage my time better and expanding my interest in illustration into making it an actual, feasible goal. The rest of the year is SO exciting, and I actually can’t share some of the best of it, but a few hints: a mini solo show, a crowdfunding campaign for IMC 2016, and creating official artwork for my favorite movie series of all time. (I’ve probably said too much, actually. Shh.)

 

 

 

ORIGINALS FROM KELLY

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Wylie Beckert is a relatively new face on the genre art scene, and yet has made a very special mark in a short time. Wylie has refined a look that is unmistakably hers, and is one of the most prolific artists on the Every Day Original team.

 

You can find her on facebook, get lost in her portfolio site, or keep reading for some insight into what makes her tick, why she lives in Maine, and why night after night you can find her at the easel.

1. So wait, you’re new to making original art pieces? When did you start creating fully traditional work? What got you to go full-in on original pieces?

I’d certainly handled traditional media before I got into digital work – but on a pretty basic level (think badly-drawn ballpoint manga colored with markers, not epic oil paintings). I’ve always been more of a draftsman than a painter, so adding what was essentially digital comic book coloring to my pencil drawings felt more natural than picking up a paintbrush. I think late 2013 is when I first dug out some unused oils from college and started trying to learn to paint; it probably took five or six months to get the hang of the basics – I had to do a ton of experimentation with different media and techniques before I started to get a similar look to my digital work.

 

2. How does your digital training inform your traditional work? Was it like starting over or did some lessons transfer? What did you have to learn?

There was a huge amount of carryover from digital to traditional – in fact, I started having better luck with painting as soon as I ditched my early attempts at direct painting, and instead tried to replicate my digital process in traditional media.

I already had a pretty good idea of how to go from a pencil drawing to a finished piece – the hard part was figuring out what combination of materials could stand in for the dozens of Multiply, Color, and Screen layers I was used to using in Photoshop, and then trying to sort out what order everything needed to happen in to get the same end result.

I’m still tinkering with the process – while I finally feel like my traditional work has caught up to my digital work, I know there’s a certain amount of redundancy at each stage, and I’m always looking for ways to give the underdrawing (my favorite stage) a bigger role in the finished piece.

 

3. You say you really kicked things off about four years ago, and you’re already moving focus from commercial to personal work. Tell us more about that. Will you keep doing commercial work? Will your personal work help pay the bills? How?

I’ve been consistently frustrated in the search for the right kind of commercial work – I seem to have a kind of an oddball style that doesn’t fit in much of anywhere (too whimsical for a lot of adult brands, too many skulls for the average bedtime story) and as a result I usually find myself having to tone down one aspect of my work or the other.

At this (early!) point in my career, devoting some time to my personal work is a chance to clarify the direction I want to take with my art, and boil my portfolio down to better represent the aesthetic I’m really passionate about. I’m hoping to come out the other side a better artist, and I’m optimistic that the new direction will resonate with art directors as well.

So, commercial work is still very much on the table for me (art directors, you still know where to find me!) – I’m just giving myself permission to be more selective about which jobs I take in the short term, in order to (hopefully) reap the eventual rewards of channelling some of my working hours towards my own projects.

 

4. I spent summers in Maine as a kid. In fact I saw Return of the Jedi three times in the theatre when I’m pretty sure my mother just ran out of things to do. Which is to ask, why settle in Maine? Does your location influence your art? Are you settled there or do you think there’s another move on your horizon? What would inspire a relocation?

I think your impressions of Maine are accurate! I followed a boy here, never thinking I’d be staying more than a year or two, only to realize that (like the formless antagonist of a Stephen King novel) Maine is a sentient evil that DOESN’T WANT ME TO LEAVE.

While I don’t think the locale has had a major influence on the content of my images (it’s not as scenic here as people think it is), six years of living in relative isolation definitely gave me plenty of reason to buckle down and focus on my art. It’s hard to imagine I would have made the same strides with my work if I’d been living in a metropolitan area surrounded by… people? Are those the things you have out there in the real world?

At any rate, I can finally say with 100% certainty that I’ve spent my last winter in Maine. I’ve got my eye on Seattle – the idea of a climate where “cloudy” is the most common complaint sounds like an impossible utopia, and the Washington forests and coastlines are some of the most gorgeous landscapes I’ve ever seen.

 

5. You have to have more living space in Maine than we do in NYC. Do you collect art? What kind, why?

I’m a pretty staunch minimalist (with an impending cross-country move hanging over my head), so there isn’t much room for decorative/luxury items in my life at the moment. Even my own art is generally taped up in boxes in the closet, safe from coffee spills, waiting for the next convention. I’m always happy when I sell a piece because it means that it will finally get to see the light and bring someone some enjoyment.

 

6. Like many of our artists, you have a really solid online following. Take your instagram, you average about 15% like engagement based on your following, where top brands average about 4.3%. In his article 1000 True Fans Kevin Kelly defines a True Fan as “someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.” Numbers aside, do you have True Fans? How do you engage with these people and keep them engaged with you? How do you know what they want, and do you tailor your shares to them?

I like to think some of my fans are True Fans! I haven’t tested the theory on a large scale yet (at the moment there isn’t a ton of Wylie Beckert merchandise on the market) but I’ve got a few loyal followers who’ve consistently picked up the few prints and originals I’ve had on offer, and sent messages of encouragement when I start a new project.

As to whether I tailor my posts to my fans – I think it’s actually the other way around. I post a ton of works-in-progress, process posts, and tutorials, and as a result a huge percentage of my fanbase seems to be made up of artists, both aspiring and professional. I always feel a little guilty for not engaging more – I’ll read a nice comment someone’s left on my work, spend five minutes trying to draft a suitably clever and thoughtful reply, then give up and go paint. My hope is that my fans are aware that my social media negligence is almost always the result of working hard to produce more art for them to look at!

 

7. Why do people collect your work?

I’d say the two things that draw people to my work are the sense of movement – flowing, decorative shapes and elegant lines – and the emphasis on character and storytelling that I bring to my work.

I also believe that a lot of the value in my originals at this stage in my career is their uniqueness – because I’m so new to traditional media, and my process is changing so rapidly, each new piece represents its own separate moment in time – completely different from past and future work even when there’s an overlap in content or style. While I’m working towards a slightly more settled technical process, I’m hoping there will always be this element of growth and change in my work.

 

8. Do you have other passions other than art? I know some other Mainiacs/illustrators like Sam Guay who keeps her own bees. What has the power to drag you away from the easel?

My favorite non-art-related hobby at the moment is “reading” – which is what I generously call listening to audiobooks while I paint. My other hobby, which I developed specifically to drag myself away from the easel, is sitting in a stupor with earbuds in and a blindfold on (so I can’t peek at whatever painting I’m working on), listening to music. On the rare occasions that Maine weather allows, I also enjoy running (music/audiobooks optional). I told you I was boring.

 

9. You have a very unique style and vision in your art, and yet I’m guessing your sources of inspiration come from many of the same places as all of us: TV, movies, books. How do you translate the same sources of inspiration into your own narratives? Can you walk us through, from a specific source of inspiration to a finished piece?

I’ll use a recent example: the King of Spades from my ongoing series of playing card illustrations, Wicked Kingdom. My main source of inspiration here was the classic playing card art we’re almost all familiar with. My first decision was what part of the source material I wanted to draw from and build on; I chose to focus on the reversible composition (two faces for the same character) and create a character with dual identities – opposing each other (in a good/evil sort of way) but thematically interrelated.

With that idea in mind, I drew inspiration for the character from the Spade symbol – it made me think that the characters in this suit would have to be botanists, gardeners, or otherwise involved with plants. Asking further questions on this concept (why would a king stoop to being a gardener?) informed other aspects of the character (the King of Spades has let his kingdom fall by the wayside, and has turned instead to caring for his garden). By looking for parallels and contrasts (what other occupations could involve working in the dirt? What might be the opposite of bringing life out of the ground?) I hit on the idea for the other half of the character’s dual identity: a gravedigger. Doing some general brainstorming brought up some possible elements to include in my painting (types of plants, themes to consider).

This ideation process helps me narrow down the essentials I wanted to include in my image to get the message across (two opposing versions of the same character; cabbages, skulls, tombstones, and shovels.) I try to visualize the layout before putting pencil to paper; an extremely rough, not-even-stick-figure thumbnail lets me double check that everything will fit properly into a rectangular page; if everything seems to be in order, I move on to a slightly larger thumbnail on toned paper (around 3×5″) to establish a value structure – always designing the most important elements (in this case, faces, skull, and seed) to be the areas of strongest contrast.

From there, all that remains is the comparatively simple final drawing and painting! As you can probably tell, this line of thinking can lead interesting places even with a very straightforward source of inspiration. The potential directions you can take with more complex inspirations (an entire book, for example) are pretty much infinite.

 

10. Now, I’m completely biased as I teach and run classes for SmartSchool, but tell us about how and why you chose to enroll in an art course when your art is and was already at such a refined point. Why go to something like the IMC (Illustration Master Class)?

There have been various points where I was okay with my art, but then got a slight push and realized how much better it could be. It’s hard to define exactly why, but SmArt School was one such push, and so was IMC. I think once you’ve reached a level that represents your self-directed “best”, it can be hard to know where to go from there (or even to realize that there’s an “anywhere” you should be going)- it gets trickier to spot the areas where you need improvement. Outside instruction has definitely helped me get through that.

At Illuxcon last year, an artist I really admire was looking at two of my pieces side-by-side (my painting from IMC, and the one I completed immediately afterwards) he pointed to the latter and asked “Why is that one better?” (not a rhetorical question). I can’t really point to any one moment of instruction that caused that shift in my own standards and capabilities, but it definitely happened.

 

11. If you’re already working, what do programs like this do for you? Is it all professional or is there a personal/social element?

I’d say the two are pretty closely related. I think interacting with other artists has had a significant impact on me professionally – not by the expected route of “networking equals more jobs”, but rather because there’s a lot to be gained by seeing new art, talking shop, and finding out about other people’s experiences and methods(and stealing them for one’s own betterment). And better art DEFINITELY equals more jobs. Not to mention how much fun artists are if you put a large group of them in a small room!

 

12. You’ve been doing a bunch of conventions in the last year or two. How do you choose which to go to? How do you decide what to bring? Do these pay off? How? Do they make you money, get you jobs? How do you quantify whether a convention is “worth it?”

This year, I’m attending Spectrum Live and Illuxcon – I chose these two because although they’re fairly small conventions, there’s a great social atmosphere and everyone there is crazy about illustration – people are there for the art rather than for cosplay and celebrities (well, except for the art celebrities, I guess).

I try to keep it simple and bring a selection of my best/most recent work – a few originals and a portfolio – along with all the heavy machinery required to display it all. Because these are such small conventions, I don’t generally attend/exhibit with the expectation of tons of sales (I haven’t even decided whether or not I’ll be bringing any prints with me this time around). Instead, I look at it as self-promotion (cultivating some of those True Fans you mentioned) and a fun social gathering (whose expense I justify with “networking!”).

Financially, I consider the convention to have been worthwhile it if I break even with the expense of attending (either through sales of original work or commissions secured). Outside of my web presence & social media, these conventions are my main marketing effort, so I’m expecting to invest some money in them from the outset, and am okay with taking a bit of a hit to attend.

 

13. I’m reviewing the portfolio review sign ups for Spectrum Live and I see you signed up. First, congrats for making it in, we had to shut it down after 90 seconds. We were flooded. Second, you’re fairly well-established now and have a look people can count on. What do you hope to get out of a review from the ADs at conventions?

At this point in my career, I’m putting my work out there less for critique and more to reiterate my interest in working with these art directors; while I feel like I’m pretty well-known in the fantasy art community, very little of my work actually comes from within it. I’m still looking for that first commission from WOTC, Tor, Orbit. I want in! It’s been a year since I last cornered anyone for a portfolio review (for reference purposes, this was before I had any traditional media work to show) so the direction of my work has changed quite a bit; I’m hoping it’s more to the tastes of the brands these ADs represent, or if not, that they might be able to put in a good word for me with the rest of the art director’s cabal.

 

14. Artists throughout history have overcome what seem like career-ending obstacles, and some have turned these into assets. Beethoven was deaf in his later years, Monet had vision issues, Van Gogh is rumored to have been color blind, the famous singer Andrea Bocelli is blind. You have a mild case of Prosopagnosia (face blindness), and don’t always recognize people right away. Still, you illustrate your figures with facial expressions in an enviable range of emotions, ages, genders, and colors. Does Prosopagnosia affect your work in any way? Do you consciously work with or against it?

I think I first realized that faces were an issue for me because of my art – it took me a really, really long time to grasp drawing faces. By comparison hands – which should be harder, they have more parts! – come pretty easily.

I think most of the reason I draw reasonable faces now (in addition to the tons and tons of practice I made myself do) is because I spend a HUGE amount of time on them. I’ve improved to the point that now I can get the faces in my art right – the first time – about half the time. The other half of the time, it can take 8 hours of reworking to get something that looks more or less human, and even more time to make it anything like the appropriate gender, age, etc. If they need to actually be “pretty”… add more hours. When I start an illustration, I always draw the faces first, because I know there’s a chance I’ll destroy the paper by over-erasing and have to start over from scratch. It’s a pain, but I think it’s worth the effort – faces are such an important part of most images that doing them right isn’t really negotiable.

 

15. In an email exchange with me, you said you’re boring. Because you work a lot? As a parent and a freelancer I understand the kind of passion that keeps you out of the social scene and into things like art and family. Still, there are theories about the importance of getting away of work and home life, and how that will make you a stronger person and improve your work. My friends who do life coaching encourage the improvement of self and work in service of the relationships we have to others. How do you respond to the idea that in order to live a complete life we necessarily must relate to others, in person? How do you do this in your own life?

I’d generally agree with that; the need for social structure is hardwired in most people, and while I’m sure there are a few rare exceptions I wouldn’t say I’m one of them. I’m looking forward to having a well-rounded life someday!

I think my current location has a lot to do with how intent I am on my work – working from home in an area that gets six months of winter, it’s surprisingly easy to become a complete shut-in. On the whole, though, I don’t regret focusing on my art for the past few years. Living somewhere you don’t love is draining, and I think allowing myself to narrow my focus to my art – which has dual importance in my life as both career and passion – has been the right move. The skills you acquire in becoming a good artist (patience, resilience, grocery shopping on a budget) carry over to all the other areas of your life, and I think they conspire to make you a better person.

 

16. Any final thoughts?

Just to keep an eye out for more art! Everyone on EDO is steadily upping their game; I know I can’t wait to see what’s coming out next, and I’m hoping I’ll get to continue contributing in some small way!

 

 

 

ORIGINALS FROM WYLIE

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