Please tell us about your art business?

I’m a mixed media artist and online creative guide. I only found out I was an artist in my thirties, and almost right from the start it became clear that this was not just about me, but that I wanted to share the gifts of art and creativity with others. I started blogging, getting my art published, and after a few years I took a life-changing leap of faith and started teaching. I love to connect with others in what has become a beautiful, supportive, worldwide community.

Collaborating with magazines is a real joy and I feel very lucky to have my art in the pages and on the covers of several inspiring publications. The latest one is the Summer 2020 issue of Somerset Studio.

I also exhibit my art at local group shows and do a solo show from time to time, but since my audience is very international, I prefer to sell my art online. I participate in an online auction once a year and it is such a fun, exciting event!

My blog and online workshops are where I share everything about my art and my journey as an artist. I’m very open when it comes to sharing my creative process, I don’t hold anything back and I like to share more than just techniques and projects, but also how to find inspiration, deal with challenges and develop your personal voice. I believe that art is one of the closest things to magic that we can experience in our lives, it connects us to the deepest, most beautiful parts of ourselves and can have such a powerful impact in the world. Joy, gentleness and a sense of wonder come through everything I create, be it art or classes.

Please tell us about your art background?

I am mostly self-taught. I discovered mixed media art at 32 and it was like being born again. I immediately embraced the playfulness of the process, purchased one book after the next and started experimenting with any supplies I could put my hands on. This is still true today!

How did you get started teaching online courses?

I started teaching, both online and at local live workshops, in 2016. I had longed to start teaching for quite a while but I’m an introvert so it felt scary too! The idea of teaching online appealed to me because of that, and it has turned out to be a great fit for me.

For at least a year before I released my first class, there had been a growing demand from my online community, so when I finally opened the doors to “Layers of Light”, there was a very full waiting list and it was successful from the start. It is designed as a beautiful journey to help you find your own creative spark and infuse it into your art, while discovering all my favorite mixed art techniques! It is still one of my most popular classes today.

Do you think that creating online art classes is a good way for artists to build a business around their art?

Teaching online has certainly changed my life, and that of my family, in the best of ways. My husband and I now work together from home, which we love. But I wouldn’t say that it will be a good fit for every artist. For me, it was clear from the start that making art was going to be about sharing the joy of creativity with an audience and I had a strong desire to teach. I’ve always loved to write and share about my process, but being a teacher is a job in itself and it took me several years before I felt confident enough to step into that role. I gave a lot of thought to the kind of teacher I wanted to be, what I wanted the students to get from my classes and how best to serve them. I got a lot of training too: I trained for two years as a a social and cultural activities organizer and got a national diploma here in France. For 9 months I facilitated workshops and led artistic projects at a nursing home, working in an Alzheimer’s unit, and at a rehabilitation center. Simultaneously I became a certified creativity coach through Whitney Freya’s online program. All of it has taught me so much about the impact of creativity on human beings, and the best ways for me to guide others on that beautiful path.

I’m not saying that so much training is necessary to teach online (there was certainly a bit of procrastination on my part!) but being an artist and a teacher are two very different things. When they work hand in hand, it can be magical, but you do have to ask yourself the right questions before you start, if you want to make it a fulfilling experience both for you and the participants. To me, guiding others towards their creative dreams is a big responsibility, I don’t take it lightly and I wouldn’t encourage any artist to embark on the teaching path unless they are really committed and motivated.

Please tell us about PencilKings.com?

Pencil Kings is a private art community for artists who are ready to get serious about improving their art. We have an exclusive course library of over 100 courses, but the real heart of everything is in the monthly challenges and workshops that we run and the bonds that members form by participating in the private forums and chatroom.

Pencil Kings has a very vibrant community, what do
artists get out of the forums?

The big thing that artists struggle with is getting clear on what they should be learning. There’s so much information now that it’s completely overwhelming as to what your next step should be. The community is where you can go and get real answers to your questions, as well as get help to improve your art.

What is your art background?

I knew that I wanted to be a video game artist from the age of 7. My friends and I heard a rumor that there was going to be a game that would let you make your own games. The idea that we could make our own ideas come to life was all I needed to get busy making designs for characters, levels and stories.

The game to make your own games never did come out in North America (as far as I know), but I just kept creating however I could. We didn’t have a computer back then, and there was no internet, so the first real tool that I had to create any kind of digital art was Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo. Then I received a hand me down computer and there was a manual for GW Basic, so I read that and started making my own simple text based games at about age 11.

The big change however was getting the internet, where I found chat rooms online where other artists were talking to each other. It was there that I learned which software I needed to get started, and then bought books to learn how to use the digital art software. There weren’t really many schools at this time to learn digital art, so everything I learned was self taught with the help of many generous artists who helped me develop my skills along the way.

I studied fine arts in university, but because digital art for film and games was such a new field, most of the education I received in this was self-taught from online sources and many, many books.

Even today I think there is a knowledge gap between what is being taught and what you actually need. Unfortunately, my experience is that many students in art programs probably shouldn’t be there and because of this you are surrounded with students who don’t possess the drive that it takes to really make it into the entertainment industry – if that’s your goal.

There are exceptions of course, but you really have to do your homework to know if the program you are going to take will actually help you, and what the calibre of students is going to be. Otherwise – you are better off just learning on your own, or joining a dedicated community like Pencil Kings where you can get access to people with experience like myself that can guide and push you.

What kind of work did you do before Pencil Kings?

Before Pencil Kings I worked as a Technical Art Director at Activision | Blizzard in the central technology group. We mostly dealt with outsourcing to help Activision’s many studios supplement their in house teams with overseas talent in Shanghai, China. My job was to make sure that the technical specifications for the project were clear and that the digital art assets being produced met the specifications. It was a lot of fun but also a lot of stress being responsible for teams of up to 50 artists to make sure that the quality was consistent, files were delivered on time and on budget.

Previous to working in video games, I worked as a visual effects and previs artist. This job was a lot of fun because we had an opportunity to influence the action that you would actually see on screen, but because of the nature of previs we could work really fast which I liked.

Does running an art training site get in the way of
doing your art?

Sadly yes… I bring the same complete devotion to my craft of improving art education for art students that I did to learning how to create art and have a career in video games. Now that I think about it – I don’t think I was ever interested in creating my own art so much as I was interested in learning the nuts and bolts of how things were made. This curiosity really suited my job as a technical art director where my job was really to help other artists make the best art that they could and guide them. I still sketch a fair bit, and am working on creating a line of meditative prints. It’s a pretty far cry from what I was doing while I was employed, but now I just create for fun.

If you were to get started in animation or digital art
today, what would you do?

I would set a goal for myself of getting into a specific industry, and then learn what tools would be needed to create the work for that industry. Next I would use the art that is currently being produced as my benchmark. For example, if I wanted to be a Disney animator then I would work like crazy to get my skills as high as a Disney animator. I’m not sure why, but many people think that they need to go to school to learn this, so they are waiting on that school opportunity before they start. This simply isn’t true because you can start right now, and there are free or low-cost software tools that you can use these days to get started. It doesn’t matter if you are 15 or 50 – you can learn most of this on your own and you don’t have to wait for anyone. Using existing high-quality work as your benchmark is a way where you will always know if you are hitting your quality bar or not. It also means that you will be creating art that is actually usable in commercial projects. I often see artists creating their own strange projects that have no real world application, which is fine, but it makes it almost impossible in most cases for an art director to look at what you are creating and know if you would be able to work with their team.

Next, I would find a few artists to work with who are interested in breaking into the same industry and form a mastermind/accountability group to keep pushing each other and learning together. 5 minds really are stronger than 1 and this is what I did, and have heard many times of other artists doing the same. These accountability buddies could be local, or in my case they could be located all over the world – it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are all serious about improving because you don’t want to waste time with people who aren’t as dedicated as you are.

To give you an example of what this would look like – I joined a mod team to create a new version of a popular game at the time – Unreal Tournament. We had a programmer, and a few artists and we all worked together as a team for free. Similar projects exist in the visual effects space like the Mila Film project where artists from all over the world come together for free to work on a project. What this does is it builds your portfolio with real assets, and also exposes you to other artists who share the same dream as you.

Lastly – you will need to start developing your network – which if you have followed the advice above you will have already started to build your network. Great art only goes so far… but when you have a friend or someone you know that can make the right introduction at the right time you end up getting the job – often even if your art isn’t as good as some of the other candidates.

If there is one mindset among artists trying to get their careers started that I could stress the importance to – it’s this idea of building your network. Every single art job that I had came because of people I knew. I was never the best artist in the studio, but I might have been the most cheerful and hard-working, and believe it or not – these ‘nonart’ skills count for a lot.

Where do you see art education in the future?

Education is changing rapidly and there really are no secrets anymore – everything you need to learn is freely available online. Despite this, art remains one of the most ‘mysterious’ subjects to learn because it’s difficult to connect the dots and there are many different paths one can take.

I see art education changing by moving away from a top-down approach where the students watch demonstrations from their instructor and going to a bottom-up approach that focuses on measurable student results and a clear path of progression.

This approach will allow anyone with the desire to learn the opportunity to develop technical mastery of the tools and give them the skills necessary to create without limitation.

We are actively working to make this shift in art education a reality through the program we offer at EvolveArtist.com.

Mitch Bowler’s Most Popular Art Class: How to Draw Faces Using the Reily Method on PencilKings.com

PencilKings.com most popular course teaches you how to construct the face using Reilly Rhythms. You’ll learn the anatomy of the face and the important muscles to remember, lighting techniques for added realism in your drawings and how to draw the face from any angle. At only $15, this is a great deal.