Welcome to my
monthly interview feature! I’m so excited to be interviewing all the fabulous
artists, illustrators and designers I’ve meet over the years (both personally
and virtually!) and sharing their artwork and experiences here on Bird Meets
Worm. Look for a new interview on the first Tuesday of every month. (Psst! You might have noticed that today is
actually Thursday—sorry about that!! The New Year has been off to a bumpy
start, but we are finally off and running over here at Bird Meets Worm! And BTW
Happy New Year!!)
This
month I’m so happy to be kicking off a whole new year of artist interviews with
supa-dupa-star Illustrator, Mike Lowery! I’ve been a big fan for a longtime and
the kiddo in my house has been a fan, too—Mike’s book Ribbit Rabbit and his activity calendar have been big hits! Mike Lowery is an artist living in Atlanta, Georgia with a
beautiful German lady named Katrin
and his incredibly genius daughter, Allister. Mike’s work has been seen on everything
from greetings cards to children’s books to gallery walls all over the world,
and he is a Professor of Illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design
Atlanta. He lives in an atomic ranch house, surrounded by trees where he likes
to draw little animals in party hats and other silly stuff. You can view more of his artwork here!
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| Let's go on a Doodle Adventure!! Woohoo! |
A: I have lots of
favorites, but I’ll tell you about working on my newest series: “Doodle
Adventures”. When I was a kid, we didn’t have cool comics in the
library. We would sneak in stuff and pass them around at lunch and I
always thought it would be really cool if there were comics that librarians
would like too. Well, that’s all completely changed and comics are now a
big part of most school libraries.
I decided I wanted to make
a series that combined my love for comics with my love for drawing/doodle
books, and DOODLE ADVENTURES was born. When it was time to come up with
the narrator, I knew I couldn’t use just some ol’ boring human, so I drew a
really plain looking duck.
The problem was, he didn’t
have a TON of personality. SO, I kept drawing and came up with this
guy. His name is Carl the Duck:
I liked that he looked
grumpy and weird. I immediately started hearing what his voice could
sound like and got excited to draw him into the story.
From there I wrote out key
moments that I wanted to happen in the story, and then took a really big stack
of cheap paper to a coffee shop and started drawing. At this stage the
drawings were very rough, with a LOT of erasing and just figuring stuff
out. One of the days I was drawing at the coffee shop, I noticed a girl
around 7 was drawing and she kept looking up at me. I peeked over and
realized she was drawing a portrait of me drawing!
Q: I’m a BIG fan of your awesome random facts
illustration series! Dish with us about how the series began—inspiration &
all!— and how it continues.
A: One morning I wasn’t on
a trip, hadn’t had anything new to eat, hadn’t met any strange folks all
day….and couldn’t NOT think of what to draw. I sat staring at the blank
page in my journal and for the first time in a really long time I absolutely
did not know what to draw. Then I remembered some weird fact that I had
read…I don’t remember the very first one, but it might be something about how
it’s illegal to carry ice cream in your pocket in Kentucky.
I’ve always loved those
kind of weird nuggets of info, so I decided to draw it out. And now I’ve
been doing it for about two years.
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| Huh! I didn't know that! But I'm SO glad I do now!!! Perfect party convo opener! |
A: THE ABSOLUTE MOST
IMPORTANT THING AN ARTIST CAN DO: Is to keep a sketchbook.
Whew. There, I said it.
It’s a place where you
figure out your “style” or what tools you like to use when you’re drawing and
all kinds of stuff. It’s also a great way of keeping track of your day,
like a journal or (the most feared word by young dudes) DIARY. I keep one
every single day, and try to spend at least 30 minutes to an hour in it.
And drawing in your
sketchbook doesn’t always have to be some intense scene, like sitting down next
to a creek with your watercolors. It can be really anything as long as your
drawing. For me, I really use it to remember things about my day a lot.
Since I was very little, I
traveled a lot with my parents and my grandparents. Traveling became a
big part of my life and then later I married an amazing woman from Germany who
had this really great family that we now go back and visit a few times a
year…so travel isn’t just fun for me, it’s also necessary.
So, it just makes sense
that some of my drawings started to be about the trips that I was on, new
sights I was seeing, new foods, etc. I love having these as a way to look
back and remember trips, but I also get a lot of inspiration on these trips for
new art and projects, and I’ll bring those ideas home and turn them into
something that (hopefully) other people would want to look at.
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| Join Mike on his travels aboard! Ni hao!! |
Q:
What is a
typical workday like for you? Set the scene (workspace, materials, accessories)
and describe your responsibilities (teaching, art making, business stuff) and
creative juju (rituals, inspiration, process).
A: When we are in town
(which for us is Atlanta), I mostly work out of the home studio that I share
with my wife, Katrin, who is also a children’s book illustrator. Some
days we will work in our studio called Paper Ghost, which is also a little
gallery we share with a few friends who are also illustrators.
We are out of town a lot,
and in that case I’ll get up really early and go down to the lobby of our hotel
and find a quiet spot where I can start drawing, usually with a cup of the free
lobby coffee in hand. I always try to draw before getting caught up on
emails and other stuff.
 |
| Sounds like some hilarious trouble!! |
A: Honestly, I didn’t know
anything when I first started. I mean I knew BASIC stuff, like the
difference between an apple and an onion, but when it came to business stuff, I
knew very little. I went to school for ART, which means that my
instruction covered a lot of topics from watercolor to dark room photography,
but very little was about the business side of making art and when it was, it
was primarily about being an artist that exhibits in galleries. Most of
my formal instruction was about technique, and then later in Graduate School,
it was about how to critique or explain your work. Which meant that
really early on, I actually learned what illustration is while I was already
doing illustration. I thought I was doing Graphic Design with a lot of
drawings in it, and realized that what I was actually doing was
ILLUSTRATION.
I read as much as I could
on the topic, and I took every single job that resembled illustration, even if
it wasn’t a good fit for me. I sent my work to anyone who MIGHT hire
someone to do a drawing for them: magazines, ad agencies, local shops,
publishers, clothing companies…anything I could find. And then I just
waited to hear back from ANYONE. Slowly work started coming in, and I
learned the business job by job.
I get a lot of folks
(usually students) emailing asking for advice about the world of
illustration. This is really hard, because I’m not sure what to talk
about. Are they wondering what pens I use, or are they wondering what
sort of portfolio case to buy when visiting art directors? It would be
like asking a mechanic: How do you fix a car.
So, here’s what I’ll say:
1) Forget
about what your “style” is and what it’s going to be. Just draw a LOT. Draw stuff you don’t feel comfortable
drawing and don’t just keep drawing it the same way. If you have a way
that you like to draw EYES or people or whatever, stop doing it and try it a
million different ways until you finally find the MOST perfect and comfortable
way for you. You won’t know it until you’ve tried what DOESN’T work.
2) Keep a sketchbook every single day.
3) Make work that people can use. Meaning: look at
magazines, books, all kinds of stuff and see what they actually use. Lots
of folks want to draw floating characters with no backgrounds. Not a lot
of companies need that.
4) Send
your work to these folks!
Q: Describe your most perfect day.
A: Get up.
Coffee. Draw for a little. Daughter wakes up. Breakfast with
wife and daughter. Toast. Boiled egg. Butter. Get out of the
house. Sit and draw in sketchbook. Read a little. Maybe a
graphic novel. Ramen for dinner with friends. Watch an 80s movie
with the family. Maybe Gremlins? A few more hours of drawing.
Read a little more. Bed.