#‘omg i love the gift art u drew for me i wanna pay u back for it sometime’ <- has never done this or anything resembling it

[leori-the-unlearned]

about the prev post: not just abt tumblr but anytime someone says ‘oh you deserve more attention/eyes on your work’ and completely does not act in a way that helps put more eyes on your work, it’s empty words :p

[read-red]

Portrait #5

Welcome back to an other episode of Portrait, This time i’m joined by someone i met on Instagram (find her links at the end)

She’s a talented artist from Connecticut, without further ado :

I’m Bryan, i guess i’m Bryan the girl, i’m from New Haven Connecticut and i’m 23 Years old.

When did you start drawing ?

I’ve been drawing on and off my all life but i didn’t really think of my self as an artist until after college when i had to decide on a career. I had tried a lot of different careers and none of them have really felt right. I was bored in them, so i set down and had a good long think about what i could really envisioned myself doing as a career, the only thing i could come up with was art.

The problem was that i wasn’t a very skilled artist at the time. The list of things i was afraid to even attempt to draw was very long and so tackled that list by doing a new year’s resolution to draw every single day for a year. So i did, and i started to share my work and i started forcing myself to post on Instagram twice a day which was a lot, and i would never do that nowadays [sometimes she still does tho] but i didn’t had job at the time so i drew and drew and over time i got good .

Then people started to seeing my started paying me to do art and buying my art. I think i went through and arc of not drawing at all, drawing a little bit, drawing everyday all day and now that it’s my job i don’t draw as much, because i’m doing a lot of business too.

How did you get into drawing ? (tho’)

I’ve done a lot of different types of art, I’ve done traditional figure drawing, some painting… They don’t really teach pen art in school, like in a traditional classroom, it’s not part of the foundations. I was always drawn (ha ha) to it but i didn’t have  chance to learn how to do it, so then i realized i would have to teach myself.

That’s what i worked on, i was figuring out how to make my drawings look like the drawings that i really liked in the old hatching and graving ways that i love in the renaissance…(a cute dog passed by and caught her attention:). So my challenge was to just teach my self over time, and that’s how i grew to love ink drawing : by learning out on my own.

How did you build yourself as an artist? Because there’s some construction going on. You can’t like be like « ok now i’m drawing , now i’m an artist » you know, there’s some kind of transition, like who am i as and artist, in what i do…

That’s a really hard question…

For a long time i felt so uncomfortable, saying that i was an artist. Because i either felt like i wasn’t legitimate , like i didn’t have the right to say that or like people would think that i was really egotistic or something. It feels lie saying you’re an artist carries a lot of weight to it.

And it feels like something you’re not allow to call yourself an artist, like you can’t call yourself a genius only other people can call you that and so i’m like i can’t call myself an artist other people have to decide.

But then at a certain point when it’s your career ad it’s all you do and earn a living you have to identify yourself as that. I will say that often times i will say that i’m an illustrator and not an artist. Because when you say that you’re an artist people think that you’re taking your cloth off on the street and screaming and like smearing chicken blood on your body or something but i’m just drawing so i think people get a clearer idea when i way illustrator.

How did you get your name?

Actually i used to be a musician and i remember i was on Soundcloud, way back this was like 7 years ago. I went by my full name, which is Bryan Schiavone ( Italian name ). It’s a very difficult name, and when people have name like that they somehow try to shorten them and nobody would ever be able to spell it or pronounce it so… One day i was on Soundlcoud i saw this person had a username that was whatever-Thegirl, and was like that’s so interesting i’m gonna do that for my name too. So when i started doing art i just kept the same name that i was using for my music. It’s so much simpler.

As a teacher, because you teach on Patreon and you have a podcast too, how does it feel like to teach ? You did some workshop too.

I’m still not fully comfortable with teaching because a part of me still think that in order to teach you have to be the best

A master ?

You have to be a master, and i’m not…i mean you just saw me struggling with my drawing earlier (she didn’t…she was so quick she was halfway through when i was still sketching….). I’m so afraid that i’m gonna be in this situation where a student turns to me and says how do i draw this tree��? And i go i don’t know that looks like a difficult tree… i can’t help you…. A part of being a good teacher is admitting that you don’t know how to do something and learning it with you students. It’s hard to know when to start teaching when you get to the point where you’re like : I’ve learned enough to share with people. I think it helped me just to have people ask me enough how do i do it and i started telling them and i guess that’s teaching.

And i think as a teacher you’re still learning, if you think that you’ve mastered and you’re not gonna learn from nobody any more then you’re closing yourself to new ideas and techniques.

And you’re a bad teacher and bad artist at that point…

Especially in art, you always have to learn something new, something new will always come to you.

When you began, how hard did you hustle ? How hard was it to get from Bryan to BryanThegirl ?

Oh my god, the hours that i put in , unpaid, over the past few years it’s just like… If i had known how much time it would take i would never have done it. Because i remember two years ago, i started selling my drawings for 15$ each. You know I’ve spent hours on these drawings and i was begging people to buy them every day like « i’m selling them i’m selling them ». I remember i made 100$ and i was like i’m making all this money… and even up after this past year i really couldn’t get any commissions and i kept advertising for them but nobody seemed interested. Even if they were interested they’d be so surprised of the cost which was incredibly low, like 30 dollars for a custom portrait. So they’d freak out and say « omg i don’t have money for that » and i would ask « how much money did you think you were gonna spend.

So there was a lot of just being rejected or not finding customers and then there was a lot of finding a lot of customers that would not pay me enough so i’d spend 10 hours doing something for 15$… Which is horrible and it made me unhappy but i guess i knew it was part of the journey, part of something that i had to do in order to get further along.

And then after working for hours and hours and not making money for years it all started to happen. Every body wanted commissions and i started saying no to people, i started raising the prices because i had to many request…

And you also you could afford to ask more

Because if they’d say «  i’m not gonna give it to you » then i would get more free time anyway. One time i got a commission request for a tattoo and i didn’t really wanna do it, i wasn’t interested in it so i told the guy this crazy price and he was like « OK, if that’s how much it costs » … ugh* so now i have to do this tattoo request, i’m getting a really good price but i don’t really wanna do it, it was so strange, but in the end its fine.

Nowadays after doing all this commission work, pet portrait Christmas gifts and everything i’m starting to focus more on personal projects, book projects which i find more rewarding and exciting.

Did you think that at some point you should have quit ?

I thought that every single day for about a year. It was a combination of « i’m so tired » « my neck hurts » « my hand hurts » and «  i hate this » and then also « this is crazy, i can’t do this i can’t just be an artist ». And everybody was telling me « you gonna have to get a normal job » «  it’s not realistic, you should give up ».

I was going to, but i think what happens is that the craziest people just keeps going,  all the reasonable people stop and then all the work goes to the people that stuck with it. If you can handle it financially and psychologically then you’ll probably be fine but the key is to not give up.

Yeah, i didn’t start any projects after my school so i can’t say I’m gonna quit because i didn’t do shit… you have to do this for like 2 or 3 years, get straight with your partner about it and then depending on how it goes you might wanna quit.

Yeah, you set a time frame and say « i’m gonna do everything i can in this time frame » and if i doesn’t work out then i’ll know I’ve tried everything and i don’t have to have any regrets i never have to have that dream anymore it’s dead so i can’t move on…

Even at a smaller scale when people come drawing with you and they quit after like 1 hour… that’s not it, i didn’t get here in 1 hour. It took me like 5 years and i’m not even good enough yet. So why would you quit (anything) after 1 hour ?

Everything that’s worth doing is difficult. That’s what i try to tell myself when i’m struggling with something. Would i want to do something that’s so easy that anyone could do it ? NO, the whole fun of it is knowing that you pushed through it.

Every great artist, Rembrandt like u mentioned, they did so many paintings you can’t really count the sketches and the little drawings just for fun, for learning and practice. In the end it was worth it.

What i love about these artist is that you can see their old sketches , like you can see Van Gogh, you an see his beginning sketches and say look he made « stupid » mistakes the same way i make mistakes and look at what he created…so it’s encouraging.

What feelings are you going through, right now, as an artist ?

Right now i’m at a transitional point, although i’d probably say that about every point on my career…hum

I got past the point of can i make it as an artist, can i earn a living. I answered it ; The answer is yes. So now that i’m out of that stress zone and i’m more confident on my ability to make money, the question for me is how do i wanna earn money ? What do i wanna do ?

And i’m starting to think about if i have the choice of doing commissions or working for and agency or doing publications or my own teaching/illustration, in a perfect world what does my life look like ? Because you start to be able to ask questions like that if things are going well. I’m starting to think i want to express myself more beyond just images. Like i wanna tell my story more i wanna talk about my life , i wanna talk about my feelings and i’m trying to find a way to do that. Part of it is done through being opened on social media. I also really wanna write more and illustrate things that are more personal to me and aren’t just still life and landscapes…i wanna share more of myself through my art.

Ofc that sounds like some hairy-fairy-lofty artist talk but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. How do i go from drawing apples and bananas to drawing how i feel inside?

Yeah, maybe that’s the goal we should all thrive to : expressing ourselves and tell a story.

Stories are like the heart of the human experience, it’s everything we do, all our relationships our lives…it’s all about communicating and telling stories. And i wanna contribute to that, i want my story to be a part of that because i love hearing other people’s stories.

At the end it’s tradition that i ask : if you could speak to you past-self or future-self which one would you choose and what would you say ?

My past-self. I think about that a lot because i had a really difficult childhood i was unhappy for most of my life until the past few years and….i don’t even think i would have said anything. If i had just seen as a young person that i would grow up and be OK and alive and have a career and be in love…if i just looked up at my adult self and knew that i was gonna be OK  i’d be like « i can get through this ». I don’t think anything that i could say would communicate that. When i was younger i felt so lost and alone i felt like it would never end…if i just knew it would get better then it would have been easier…

It was a very interesting evening with Bryan. I’m really glad she came to Paris, meeting her made me want to hustle more and travel more. Talking with her felt educating and inspiring. I came a stranger, with a camera and recorder, and i left with emotions and stories of an artist i now call friend.

https://linktr.ee/bryanthegirl

Thank you for reading this portrait, it was very dense but i hope you enjoyed getting to know Bryan more, as i did.