In The Studio

Where do you find most of your influence comes from for your illustration work?

 

I'm going to be a simpleton here and admit it - I just get super inspired by other people's work. Not necessarily illustrators - painters, designers, photographers. Of course, your own life experiences are important too, and they shape the way you think and carry yourself, which in turn will absolutely influence what you create. But the way you build a visual vocabulary, from the very beginning, is usually by copying and trying to figure out other artists. While I don't really copy anymore, I definitely catch myself staring at other peoples' work in awe and wondering how the heck they did whatever they did. I've had illustrations come to me as literally a mashup of 3 images I'd recently come across - that really happens.

How do you maintain an ongoing stream of work?

 

While I try to keep myself active, there are definitely times when I am a lot more active. Having a routine helps, as does participating in many different group projects and anthologies to keep you going. I feel like I'll be repeating myself, but it's all about not losing sight of what you love doing and why you're drawing in the first place. Keeping a sketchbook definitely helps too.

When for you do illustrations hold more strength than words?

 

I feel they're strong in different ways, so it's hard to say when it's stronger. But there are a lot of visual clues that can be hard to evoke through text; a strong illustration makes use of these clues in a way that text can't. You don't need to know a language or even how to read when you look at an image. A good, single illustration may very well, at a glance, express something that would take pages of words to be communicated.