Category Archives: Interviews

Featured Artist Of The Week: Lisa Marie from DawdlingDoodles

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Do you like quirky, yet pretty art? Then Dawdling Doodles has exactly what you need. Artist Lisa Marie has created a charming series of adorable and sometimes funny pieces of art, that are softly colored and simply beautiful. I had a chance to ask her a few questions a few days ago and wanted to share this interview here with you.

Me:  How long have you been drawing and creating art?
Lisa: Pretty sure I was born with a crayon in my hand. But I’ve been making art professionally for about 5 years now (opened my studio after I completed my MA in Art History). The doodles started about 1 year ago. Mostly in my studio I create fine art portraits and I needed a way to decompress artistically, so I began doodling on scrap pieces of paper. After a while, I had a pile of cartoon images and I figured I would put them to work – that’s how my doodle blog was born.

Me:  Your Dawdling Doodles are charming, and showcase a quirky sense of humor. How did you come about putting them on Zazzle?
Lisa: Thank you! I already had a Zazzle store showcasing my fine art drawings (http://www.zazzle.com/nosesnposesfromalm), hence opening a second store showing silly doodles (http://www.zazzle.com/dawdlingdoodles) was a fun side project at first. But then they became very popular and it just started to grow and grow! Now it’s just part of my regular studio routine.

Me: What is your favorite aspect of creating art for Zazzle?
Lisa: I love seeing where all my customers come from! The idea that someone in Ireland or Switzerland is wearing one of my doodles on a t-shirt makes me smile! And around the holidays, when the store gets really busy, it’s really fantastic to think that people all over the world are giving my doodles as presents! Sometimes I think there’s no greater gift than the gift of humor.

Me: Take us through your process of creating a piece. Do you sit down with a specific idea in mind, or do you let your creativity flow without boundaries when you sit down to create a piece?
Lisa: Heh, ummm……it’s pretty sporadic. Doodles happen when I need a break from some realistic portrait that I’m drawing for a customer. Usually, I just grab a piece of paper and start to play. Eventually, one particular doodle catches my eye and that’s the one I commit to finishing. If I really want to make something pop, I’ll even put it in Photoshop and enhance some details. But I have a strict rule to never take my doodles too seriously. If I overwork a cartoon, it loses that impulsive playful feel.

Me: How can the audience connect with you outside of Zazzle? Do you have any social media accounts or blogs you want to mention?
Lisa: Oh, I’m all over the place! They can find me on Instagram (ArtistryByLisaMarie), they may see my fine art portraits at ArtistrybyLisamarie.wordpress.com, and they can see a new doodle every Monday on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DawdlingDoodles

Me: What would you like to tell an independent artist out there, who is trying to get the nerve up to put themselves out there?
Lisa: There will never be a “perfect time” to start, so just go for it! Really, sharing your art can be one of the greatest hurdles for a new artist. You just have to look the computer square in the keyboard and put your stuff out there!

Thanks for taking the time to answers these questions.

As always, please support independent artists with your purchase. And stop by again next week, when I will feature another exciting independent artist.

Have a blessed day!

Claudia

Featured Artists Of The Week: Thomas “Swiss” Wuthrich

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Independent artists range in the choice of their medium and subject matter greatly. I find it intriguing whenever I find an artists who can capture my attention in an unexpected way, just as Thomas Wuthrich has done with his humorous way to create relateable pieces of art. Thankfully I had a chance to ask him a few questions about his work in general and what he thinks about working on the Print On Demand Platform, Zazzle.

Here is the short interview I conducted with Thomas recently:

Me: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today, it is a great pleasure toy connect with you.
Tell us a little about your journey to the art you create (amongst other places) on Zazzle today?
Thomas: Many, many years ago, I stumbled across a book at the library about making money writing gags for greeting companies (just the gags). I got pretty good at coming up with, literally hundreds of ways to say “Happy Birthday”, “Get Well Soon”, etc. It was great training. A few years later, I began freelancing gags to cartoonists, including Bill “Lockhorns” Hoest. I would include a little sketch on the 3 X5 cards I’s submit. With encouragement from several cartoonist clients, I began drawing up my own gags and submitting them to magazines. After winning a 5000 US$ grand prize in a cartoon contest by a cigarette company, I was hooked on Cartooning. Even though I have sold lots of toons over the years, I still consider myself to be basically a gagwriter who can draw a little.
Me: What made you choose the name for your pen-name “Swiss”.
Thomas: I choose the pen-name “Swiss”, because my parents had emigrated from Switzerland about 15 years before I was born.
Me: Tell us a little about your style of work.
Thomas: You’ll notice that my toons are simple and uncluttered. Even though I have sold lots of toons over the years, I still consider myself to be basically a gag writer who can draw a little

.
Me: Judging by the quality of work you provide, I say you are a lot more than that. Thank you for this interview.

Check out Thomas Wuthrich’s cartoons out on Zazzle at “Swiss Toons” right now!

Author Devon Henry – The Interview

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I am very exited to present to you today an interview with a dear and wonderful fellow Author, Devon Henry. I recently read her book “Kaijin”, – about which I will post an review later this week  – as well as her work on Medium, so I really wanted to share this interesting writer with you. You should really check out her work, but I am going to let her tell you more about herself and her creative endevours.

Devon Martin

Devon Henry

 

Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and your current project:

Well thank you very much for this opportunity! I’m from Los Angeles, I have three dogs. I love avocado and Jurassic Park and I hate kale. I have watched all seven seasons of 30 Rock more than anyone probably should.

Currently I am working on my first full-length novel which I hope to have out later this year. It’s science fiction geared towards younger readers and I’ve been working on it since late 2011. I’m very, very excited for people to finally read it.

I am looking forward to it (and I hear you about kale). What brought you to writing? Did you always wanted to be a writer?

I’ve wanted to be a lot of things in my life. As a child I wanted to be a paleontologist and make movies and study different cultures and religions, but there’s always been this caveat that I would write about it too. My profession has always been up in the air but there was never a question about writing.

I really have my parents to thank for that as well. They never questioned it or pushed me into anything else and dutifully marched me to the dollar store two blocks from our house to stock up on Lisa Frank notebooks every Saturday. I’m very grateful for that.

Sounds like a wonderful way to grow up. What are your greatest obstacles to creating your art/finishing a project?

I’m sure most writers will know what I mean when I say there’s that hypercritical part of your brain that gets louder and louder the longer you stare at your work. Then suddenly it’s 3 AM and you’ve spent the better part of the night revising one sentence and you’re over-caffeinated and just thinking, “This is it. This is insanity. Someone take my laptop away.”

How did you or do you overcome these challenges?

I know that a lot of writers work better in seclusion, but I have to say that having a good support system of nosy friends keeps me motivated. It’s very easy, for me at least, to procrastinate and leave a project for ages if I don’t have anyone checking in on me. So to have friends constantly texting and asking to see revisions or making sure I’m sticking to my deadlines really helps.

You are blessed to have such a support system, good for you! What are your future aspirations?

Ultimately I’d really like to carve out a role for myself as a successful comedy writer. It’s my one true passion in life- avocado-based recipes notwithstanding. To be at a point where I could focus solely on that as a career would be amazing.

I think you are on the right track to accomplish this goal. In Kaijin, you chose to use a first person, present tense narrative to express the stories, which I think worked out very well. What made you choose to express the stories in such way?

First of all, thank you! Writing it that way was definitely a risk in terms of storytelling and I’m glad it came across that way.

When I began writing Kaijin, I had a vision of this private slice of Los Angeles full of monsters and demons and banshees and it was important to me to present that vision in a way that would be believable and not read immediately as a run-of-the-mill horror story. So I wrote it all- with the exception of “The Siren and the Immigrant”, in present tense and made a point of never naming the women in my stories. I wanted to make it seem as though the subjects of these stories could be literally anyone.

And you succeeded in that as well. What do you want your readers to know about you, that they might not be aware off?

Let’s see, I am also a trained Improv Performer, Sketch Comedy Writer, Set Designer and I can pick stuff up with my toes. I’m afraid of spiders and elevators. My resume is very impressive, clearly.

That is quite a resume! How can a reader find out more about you? 

Well my first book, “Kaijin”, is available in paperback or for Kindle on Amazon as well as the Createspace Marketplace. I also have a Medium profile that I try to update with new short comedic fiction every week for practice (This is also where you can find my ongoing Jurassic Park/Parks and Rec crossover series “Burt Macklin: Raptor Wrangler”). And, of course, readers can get in touch with me via my twitter- which I also keep updated with any new projects or multi-media works that I do. Come say hi, I’d love to hear from you!

Thank you so much, for spending time with us Devon! I am looking forward to hearing more from you!

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I will post a review of Devon Henry’s book “Kaijin” later during the week, so please stop by again, and most importantly check out Devon’s work via the links below!