‘I have not failed — I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.’ — Edison (on working to invent the lightbulb)
Note — All interview questions by the incredible u/raignbeau of r/AvatarTrading! ❤
1). For all the people who don’t know yet: who is JasColors aka u/DreamingColors? In regards to your Reddit username, why did you pick DreamingColors?
Hello! I’m Jas (aka @jascolors on twitter and u/dreamingcolors here on reddit!) — a self-taught artist with a love of bright colors, whimsical fantasy designs, and bringing joy to others. I’ve actually had a few different accounts over the years, but with u/dreamingcolors as a reddit name I feel like I’ve been able to enjoy the freedom of exploring a fully artistic identity. To me the name ‘dreamingcolors’ captures a lighthearted aesthetic of free-spirited colorful artistic exploration that I wanted to be able to share with others on the journey.
Hiya I’m jas aka u/dreamingcolors! This interview is kinda long ooops sorry I write a lot, but have some cute arts and enjoy browsing! :3
2). This is your second RCA collection! But let’s do a little rewind first! In your first post where you announced that you were part of it Gen 3, you described it as “Dreams really DO come true”. What was it like finding out you were part of the program?
Finding out I was going to be part of Gen3 was such an incredible experience! I remember opening the email and I was so excited I may or may not have put down the computer and danced around the room a little hehh (I was alone, so no one will ever know if its true or not :P)
I’ve been using reddit since maybe 2014 (just shy of a decade!) and have enjoyed reddit since to scroll cute images (I’m looking at you r/awww), explore new topics on esoteric topics I was interested in, as well as find out new facts and things I never knew that I never knew before.
One of the main things that drew me to reddit initially and kept me here beyond just entertaining and informative scrolling has been the ability to share my work with others and discover new opportunities to create and build things that were interesting to me. I’ve always loved scrolling through subs like r/gamedev or r/gamedevclassifieds just to see what other people are building and where I might be able to contribute, r/icandrawthat and other art request subs in the creative space, posting anime fanart to r/anime, etc. Along the way, I’ve actually found some really cool projects built by even cooler people, some of which I’m lucky enough to be able to call friends today!
Reddit was actually also how I found my way into the crypto and NFT space originally. I was browsing r/cryptocurrency early on and found some folks giving away free pizzas to celebrate BTC pizza day (shoutout to pizzaDAO, who were so great to dive into web3 with — they helped provide a platform and gallery show with audiences for selling my first NFT, a chance to contribute my art to a generative nft collection, and just a space to learn and connect with ‘alpha’ info about other projects in the space that I was able to continue learning and exploring with). I also enjoyed picking up free nfts across various subs like r/NFT (including an adorable bunnz from Moglets — one of many sources of potential inspiration for my Eco Adventurer’s lil bunny!)
One of the first cryptos I learned about was $nano (I ran out in the middle of covid just to go WeNano geocache adventuring to earn my very first bit of crypto haha), and ended up taking fun $nano commissions for art/design logo gigs on various subreddits.
Some of my first explorations in the artistic world of crypto- my first nft sold to a collector via PizzaDao (first), and a $nano art commission for r/superstonk (last)
My very first nft collected on polygon (bunnz! project by u/PixlitEth) airdropped to me in spring/early summer of 2021…and the lil eco adventurer reddit design I made recently in gen3 :)
To me Reddit feels kinda like a mirror of the internet, but one where you can find opportunities to engage with others and interact with other individuals rather than just static webpages put up by corporations, so I’ve always found it to be such an exciting place to explore and poke around — and beyond thrilled to see my work sold and featured on the website! :)
All that being said for why I love reddit and this opportunity, I think the “dream” for me as a creative has always been able to make cool wearables art that an audience of people could enjoy collecting and customizing with (especially have always wanted to make wearable backgrounds — its a very specific dream I know haha, which is why this felt so cool!) Growing up I played way way too much neopets, and I spent an especially large amount of time collecting, trading, customizing with, and trying to optimize around my collection of ‘neocash’ wearable items. On the one hand I loved the customization and art aspects at the core of it all — I saved tons of different outfits I loved, and even drew my own fanart items mashed up with official art sometimes, as I dreamed about wearables I would love to see made someday.
On the other hand I also loved the collectible/tradeable nature. Despite not even being on blockchain or even having any official internal game marketplace features, there were entire user maintained directories cataloging trade ‘values’ of each item, and we essentially communicated on the forums/boards and trust traded back and forth so people could get what they wanted. If you were smart about it, found good deals and helped match people with the specific items they were looking for, collected rare items, etc. you could trade your way up to your dream items too. Looking back, it’s pretty wild how such systems formed entirely driven by user interests outside the realms of even what the developers intended, and it’s exciting to think about how technology like blockchain has the potential to be able to make such systems safer, more accessible, more transparent and reliable into the future.
So that was a really long winded way to say, TLDR: reddit avatars was the perfect combination of being about collectible tradeable customizable art on a dynamic community platform of opportunities to share my work with others, and I was so excited to be apart of it!. :)
3). Let’s take a quick look back at Gen 3 first. How did you experience (the launch of) your first collection/Gen 3? You sold out Ember Sorcerer! What is it like to have an avatar of your first collection sell out?
What a whirlwind! Being a part of the Gen3 launch and selling out my Ember Sorcerer was such a mindblowing, incredible experience. For me as an artist there is nothing more exciting than seeing your art being used and appreciated, so it was beyond cool to see not only the art sell out within the day, but also see people start popping up in the comments repping my art, or posting it in mashups sent to the sub. In the time since launch, some of us artists have also done a ‘Draw this in your style’ drawing competition, and it’s been so incredible to see all the many fanarts of my Astral Spellcaster, too. A very heartfelt, and genuine *THANK YOU* to everyone who bought a piece, mashed it up, collected it, has drawn it, or just enjoyed it along the way.
So cool seeing all the mashups and fanarts! ❤
The Ember Sorcerer has a ton of elements I consider to be like me — a hybrid of fantasy, technology, fire, etc. and it was so fun to see it launched out in the world! There’s even a hint of my irl baking adventures (if you look for hidden arts in the layers …perhaps paired with the transparent porthole belly of the eco adventurer? ;) I’m a sucker for a good chocolate chip cookie!) Someone once mentioned they thought it was based upon Harry Potter (it actually *isnt* at all actually haha xD But I do have some very fond memories of staying up late to read HP when new books dropped, and think it’s so fun some people might see the lil owl as being a fun hp throwback).
Another fun fact — I stuck the little rover in as a companion for this avatar in part for the futuristic technology, in part because I’ve had the opportunity to work on a very tiny part of design testing for the Perseverance rover as an intern, a long time ago! It’s super cool for me to weave in these little sneak tidbits into these pieces that can live on in the blockchain and wallets of collectors around the globe.
Specifically on the launch itself, it was really exciting getting to share my participation in the program leading up to the drop. I had been watching in the nft space for a while prior to launch, but never quite found the right opportunity or project to launch my art as the highlight with (the stakes could feel relatively high in 2021, and many of the pfp style projects were geared towards much more utility than ‘art’ in the way reddit avatars have been; the few attempts I made to share my art never quite took off).
Being apart of reddit allowed for some degree of attention to be generated intrinsically. Without needing to coordinate a million collabs nor promise some giant roadmap, the reddit drop was on the alpha radar of nft people I knew and shared spaces with, which was so wild! Most of the discords I was in knew about the drop — even some people I ran into in person at conferences knew about the impending drop. This was so cool and exciting for me, and I will always appreciate the opportunity that reddit provided as a platform during this time to share my work with both their reddit audience, and the web3 space as a whole.
As over the moon as I was about selling out my sorcerer, I think the drop was also, slightly, bittersweet. The Gen3 drop experience quite honestly was, I think, a bit frustrating, stressful and disappointing for a lot of people — from the chaos of drop launch delays and ambiguity, to overmints and bots. Beyond just floor price movements (hard to control tbf) and critical views from fans on the drop as a whole, there was also just some general sense of ‘is this it?’ — could there be more interesting promotional opportunities for avatars or providing a platform for artists, or some potentially other avenue of ‘progress’ in expanding the program to reach beyond the sphere of those in web3 and avatar collecting already? Is the future mostly just more and more avatars dropped? How can more people be brought in to enjoy the experience? Where does the program head from here?
It’s a sentiment that I’ve heard in some avatar community members’ feedback and something I recognize occasionally echoed in my own thoughts too. If you feel disappointed or uncertain about the future, please just know that you’re not there alone. I don’t know where the future of the program goes, or all the best steps that we can take to get there collectively together — while I have some ideas myself, to be honest figuring things out along the way is always difficult, and it’s not ever an easy path to carve out a new market, even if you’re a large company like reddit. To be clear, I also don’t think as an artist that my primary goals are necessarily maintaining exclusivity and scarcity of my artwork as the main drivers of its value either, so I don’t necessarily presume that a wider audience or larger program would have an effect on secondary values, if that is a factor you consider when building your collection. But I do think it would be exciting, fun, and true value to see the reddit avatars thrive and grow to bring joy to broader audiences in the years to come, and I hope that eventually it figures out a way to get there.
Regardless of the future, I just wanted to take a brief moment to share that I fully appreciate all of the support that has been sent my way thus far: every collector means so much to me and I hope to be able to find ways to create more art that brings joy to people into the future!
Please always feel that you can reach out too — with ideas, with suggestions, or just with your vents and frustrations too, even if I don’t necessarily have the power to change the reddit side of the equation. Avatars are fully completed pieces of artwork at sale, and currently have the cool utility of being able to be mashed up with all the other avatars/used as a pfp on reddit, so its awesome we can enjoy the pieces as they are today without waiting on the future. Part of being on the journey is not just the hope for something exciting at the end of the trip, but appreciating the uncertainty of the path and the opportunities that it can create, as well as the people we travel with who make the journey worthwhile — thanks to all who have been around for that journey!
5). Few months later, Gen 4! You created Sunlight Spirit and Moonlight Spirit. Name and look wise they are opposites. Can you talk us through the creative/thought process?
It’s wild how soon gen4 came up shortly afterwards! Having done a piece for the medieval-themed avatar trading fanart contests run by Oni previously, I thought it would be a fun idea to expand upon a medieval/olden times idea as a slight nod to the time-based theme of ‘retro’ while still mostly getting to follow my love of fantasy haha.
The Sunlight Spirit was thus designed to draw on the base design of this medieval concept, with hints of medieval tiling. I had this really cool old book of hundreds of medieval tiling patterns -its a neat book, printed on an actual printing press and embellished with gold gilding on the edges. From this I drew some general aesthetic ideas, and it seemed like a fun idea to make something elegant and golden that could appeal to the slight degen in all of us hehh (but in a tasteful and gorgeous way!). Fun fact — a small portion of the background part hidden behind the snoo was lightly designed with the cone lovers in mind, too ;)
Some of the initial sketches, medieval snoo inspiration and messy concepts that went into the early iterations of sunlight spirit and the rest of the gen4 set :)
An element of inspiration for the overall aesthetic and composition of the set were these lovely circular windows I had in the place I was living at the time, though I’ve since moved. I wanted a way to remember the place as being a special spot where I made some great memories (I was by these windows when opening that first RCA acceptance email, and launching my first set of avatars!), so encapsulating them in an avatar to live on forever seemed like such a cool way of remembering them.
The light shining through these windows was so gorgeous! Life goal is to someday live somewhere with circular windows again hahaha. xD
I also felt I had the opportunity to make some awesome cute art in gen3, so for gen4 wanted to experiment with stuff that felt a little cooler and slicker, in the hopes that maybe wider audiences could find an avatar they liked and resonate with my work (: Idk if that worked out haha, but I’m quite happy with how things turned out with the complementary set of moonlight and sunlight spirits — and it was incredible to see the sunlight spirit sell out early on in the drop!
In some ways they’re like a dark/anti-hero corollary to my first set — still bright vibrant art and pets (albeit hidden this time!), and the accessory I designed I wanted to be able to match with pieces from either gen.
PS- you can still get the moonlight spirit for $10 in the shop right now, though the sunlight spirit sold out!
6). From my understanding artists were given a choice to make an accessory. You made one; Spirit Seeker! Which is a lovely accessory, with a very sweet meaning and a really good bang for your buck! With Spirit Seeker, but also with the little animal in Astral Spellcaster, these feel very Jas-like because they remind of the Elemental Wanderers you made. Is there a story behind these beautiful creatures with long dreamy tails?
I’m so glad to hear you’ve enjoyed the Spirit Seeker and Astral Spellcaster creatures! :) Truth be told — there isn’t any wild story! Hahah xD I just love drawing these flowy little creatures and always have enjoyed this kind of aesthetic. I’ve been drawing these kinds of flowy designs in various styles for a while now, beyond even just the elemental wanders set ~ it definitely felt like an opportune chance to bring in some jas style arts, so I figured why not!
Spirit Seeker avatar (bottom) and some earlier iterations (?) / arts I had drawn in a coloring book style previously (top, circa 2016)! Love flowy designs so much heheh :)
They definitely drew some inspiration from my Elemental Wanderers series though too for sure. As I would mod or spend time in various communities people would sometimes wonder when I was going to make a 10k collection based on my elemental wanderers series lol … its not quite the same as a 10k collection, but in some ways this is breathing new life into them, which is so fun for me :)
PS- I was super lucky and grateful to have been given the opportunity to create an accessory, which was run as a limited experiment for gen4. However hopefully we see more of these affordable pieces pop out in future gens from all your favorite artists as well!
7). In your Reddit user bio you wrote that you are a fan of cute pets. Looking at your portfolio I noticed you draw a lot of pets. The first NFT you ever made was a dog. What is your favorite animal to draw and what is the hardest one?
The dog in question… actually a drawing inspired by a reddit art request!
I love to draw flowy things, so all things with tails are good! Cats are also awesome ( because they’re basically liquid animals right? :P ) I love drawing most mystical dragons/foxes/neko hybrids as a result — its hard to pick just one!
Early on in my artistic journey I was inspired by neopets and often found myself trying to draw ‘peophins’ — vaguely inspired by hippocampus mythical creatures (basically these are horse-like creatures with mermaid like tails) and it was both incredibly fun to draw these animals with long tails and flowy manes, but also so very hard to pose them in ways that felt natural and correct (especially without real references to follow haha) — and I feel like my art has mostly naturally evolved to just keep drawing more flowy mythical creatures as an extension.
More rigidly defined real life animals are more of a challenge for me, in part because getting them right without looking stiff feels harder — also because there might be a need to get them more anatomically correct in general lol. I don’t know if humans count as ‘animals’ haha, but they would definitely be at the top of my ‘need to study’ list — we have such high expectations around human accuracy because we read into expressions and experience them so much in daily life, and I have a lot of anatomy studying to do before I can do humans well!
8). You were also active as a member before you became an RCA artist. You made a lovely entry for one of our monthly art competitions. What’s it like to go from “member” to “RCA artist”?
It’s been such a welcoming and warm experience! The Reddit Collectible Avatars community has been so welcoming and kind and supportive of the artistic journey. It was so encouraging and exciting seeing all the comments come in on my original fanart entry piece just with people enjoying, appreciating the art, and hoping it to become a real avatar someday (and played a large role in why I wanted to bring it to life in gen4, I think!)
Being a part of an actual community where people might recognize your art or know your name is actually kind of new to my reddit experience. It’s so fun to be able to see names you can recognize across the community — not just artists, but for example really diehard collectors, the golden hodl crew, the guy who collects #23’s, collectors of #1s, etc. To me I’ve always loved reddit, but it seemed more topically focused in a sea of anons, with people that tend to be drawn together by shared interests, but not necessarily particular shared/repeated/common interactions with each other where you might come across people on more than one occasion. Despite being somewhat new to that experience of connecting with other individuals on reddit in a community setting, I think that layer of depth really makes for the most meaningful experiences. So thanks so much for welcoming me into the community!
9). You have been in web3 for a while. You had NFT collections before. What would be your advice for any artist that might be interested in selling their own NFTs?
I would say I’d have a few pieces of advice for any aspiring artists looking to get into selling NFTs -
- Recognize that NFTS are just a medium, and selling art is its own challenge.
- Stay grounded. Always know your own goals and strive towards them.
- Find a good community to learn and grow in, good things take time!
Just to expand a little~
(1) Recognize NFTs are a medium — that means that like any other medium, there are logistics to adapt to ( in addition to pure art fundamentals, understanding technical gas requirements, chain-specific nuances and culture, marketplaces, etc.) It means like any other medium, scams can absolutely happen if the people using the technology use it in that way, so learning about safety and security is important, as well as being considerate and understanding of those who may have reservations, and how to navigate in the context of those concerns. Most importantly, NFTs being just a medium means successfully selling art is still more than just creating incredible artwork and hoping it sells. Just creating an NFT doesn’t convey a story of the artist behind it, create a personal image, nor build a brand people will necessarily fall in love with and want to collect.
So if you don’t find success right away, don’t give up! You might be the most incredible artist in the world and still struggle to sell a piece if no one knows it’s out there and why they should buy it. It’s easy to get emotionally attached to our work as artists sometimes, but don’t be discouraged in your abilities, your art, or your potential for success on the basis of sales alone, as oftentimes lack of a sale can be entirely unrelated to the art itself. But DO take it as an opportunity to learn a new skill set and adapt to the landscape at hand — perhaps diving more into the social side of things to build an artistic presence for yourself, marketing, finding projects to partner with, or other collaborations can give you the avenues you need to build bridges, make connections, and start building towards success.
2) I’d say whenever you are attempting anything, but especially when it’s in a new or developing environment, it’s always helpful to stay grounded and attuned to your goals. This gives us meaningful ways to assess how we’re doing, lets us objectively adjust when needed, and prevents us from getting swept up in the sentiment of ‘fear of missing out’ fomo, or ‘everything is headed to zero’ panic.
Are your goals to share your art with wider audiences? To start building a collector base of your work? To make money, to have fun, or to build a name for yourself? Do you want your pieces to be scarce and exclusive or widely available and in the hands of many? Do you want your art to be in projects as the face of utility, or curated as art itself? How much of a relationship are you willing and able to curate with collectors of your work? Where do you want to see your art end up in the long run?
There are no ‘right’ answers to any of these questions, but understanding your answers to these ideals can help you pick the projects, opportunities, and art release strategies that are right for you and your art journey. There’s no lack of opinions to be found on the internet and if you manage to attract enough attention (a good thing!) there will always be feedback on what people want, but it’s impossible to always please everyone — so be proactive in establishing your own path and setting up communication that will draw those supportive to your goals to you.
3) Find a good community and opportunities to learn and grow in. While some people are lucky to find overnight success, for most of us it’s a long and never ending journey of working towards our next goals — having support and friends along that path is so important to feeling empowered to take that next step. Having friends with similar goals can help make you aware of resources you can use or opportunities to grow too. Oftentimes by supporting others rather than just focusing on our own art and goals, it makes the journey more fun, more realistic, and more manageable along the way.
Just to mention some of the cool communities I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of over time — PizzaDAO (cool project for diving in and getting hands dirty in web3 whether you like making art or organizing events, and have weekly calls if you just want to listen in and find ways to contribute); Zen Academy ( a great general web3 onboarding community for learning and asking questions alongside other like-minded students, also with weekly calls to listen in on), KikoMints (a free mint degen project that evolved into a pfp derivatives shop, always fun to follow fellow builders and grow together along the journey!) Tons of other great stops along the way like Everseed, SkullX, and others that I’ve enjoyed fanart-ing in and poking into from time to time (:
I’ve also spent some time poking around some of the larger nft communities such as Cool Cats (in gen4), Azuki, etc. So-called ‘blue chip’ projects in nft space for a season have tended be web3 hubs of sentiment, attention and interest in nft space, so finding ways to learn about and interact with people from other projects either through derivative fanart work of your own or stopping by active project discord communities themselves can be really helpful towards learning and growing in the space).
Mystics from Kikomints project, some azuki/everseed and coolcats fanarts — the art in the space is always so inspiring, but it’s always the people you meet that mean the most!
It’s always a balance to enjoy familiar spaces you find encouragement and support in while also branching out to meet new people and find new opportunities, but I think it’s so important to do both. Join some twitter spaces and say hello, meet people in new communities, and find opportunities to network while staying true to yourself, and you might find some next steps and pathways you might not have found otherwise!
It was such a dream come true to be mentioned in this Opensea Currents Newsletter snippet, and so glad to have been able to make it there with the support of other amazing art inspirations like clon & penguitt along the way!
10). I am always very curious if people around you, family and friends, know about you being an RCA artist and what they think of it?
In terms of friends, I’ve mentioned doing art on reddit to a few irl friends and have even showed them some of my the art/avatars, but have always kept it kind of low key (as I don’t necessarily want to shill to people who might not feel ready for crypto haha). From their reactions it sometimes feels like making art is not that interesting or big a deal haha (maybe I’ve underplayed it too much lol), but In general they’ve been supportive and happy for me! And all my web3 friends have been so supportive, encouraging and excited for my RCA artist role, which feels so incredible as well.
While I did mention the RCA thing to my immediate family prior to gen3 launch I similarly kept things pretty low key and low expectations, and mostly hid away during off times during Christmas break to work on art. So when launch finally happened and I was able to share about my launch experience — my family was so impressed! I think they were especially blown away by the sheer volume and sales, and my mom wanted to know why I hadn’t drawn even more!
For me personally it was really incredible selling more in avatars than I had made in every single tiny logo/freelance/game/book/random art gig I had worked on in the creator side of my life up until that point added up combined- and in a single drop was absolutely wild. But what was the coolest was seeing my parents impressed, and maybe even thinking that it was worth putting more of my time into things. Seeing that traction and validation always feels so encouraging.
One person I wish I could share my RCA artistry with is my grandfather, who passed away a few years ago at an old age after a long life working in a small bag factory that he built and operated with my grandmother every day for years. It’s I suppose a somewhat stereotypical immigrant story about a better life — but they worked really hard at it, and things turned out pretty well for them. Later on in life my grandfather added a small gift shop to the factory, with toys, bags, little craft kits, houseware, furniture, literally everything lol. According to my parents he never found a way to make it profitable, but ran it at a loss (made possible since the factory was also still bringing profits) and kept trying to make it work, perhaps in part out of a desire to have something to bring joy when the grandkids came to visit. It’s been closed for quite some time now, but I still have fond childhood memories of running through the store aisles, being able to pick out anything during my visit, and bringing back a souvenir branded with his name (also the name of the shop).
I think it partly runs in the family to try to be practical, frugal, efficient, etc — to make things that build value and take us a step closer towards stability, and I’m mostly on a ‘useful’ engineering track myself right now. I believe it’s generally not a bad idea to focus on finding the shortest paths to building value for others, and working on practical things is often a good route to doing so. But it’s also so exciting and fulfilling for me to also be able to launch something that just brings joy for the sake of joy, is reaching actual people who also enjoy and find value in the work as is and reasonably compensates for my time, even if maybe it’s not particularly ‘useful’ (sorry for the lack of utility thus far lol). I’m still not at the point where I could justify pursuing any kind of full time art personally yet, but to be honest maybe it never has to be that for me either as long as I am able to keep finding new opportunities to create and bring others joy along the way — for now, I’m just incredibly excited to see that shop dream come to life (for myself, and hopefully for those who enjoy it along the way).
My grandfather was always someone who was hard to please (a little bit of those grumpy older person with higher expectations vibes if you know what I mean) but I like to imagine he would be proud to see what I’ve been able to accomplish, too.
11). When/where did you learn to draw? And do you have any tips for beginners?
Honestly, I learned a ton just by experimenting, learning and practicing! I think I took a single art class in high school one week over the summer for a few hours maybe, but other than that my last formal art class was in middle school haha (no spare time between rigorous classes and music extracurriculars). That being said, whenever I had spare time over summers, holidays, or otherwise I have always enjoyed doing art. I dove in with a combination of practice and tutorials (I learned from a lot of personal neopets tutorial webpages, deviantart tutorials, random misc tutorials I found online, etc.) but there are also tons of fantastic tutorials on youtube these days I’d absolutely take advantage of today (and still do hehe).
I think changing up mediums was one of the ways I learned to grow the most — it’s so easy to pick certain patterns of drawing things, and repetition is helpful for practice, but it can also cause me personally to get stuck in certain pitfalls or relying on certain tools or effects, too. I swapped my toolset around so many times as I learned — from MS Paint and trackpad drawing, to nintendo ds colors homebrew drawing apps, to online node-based effects generative art (via an antiquated Aviary suite of flash art tools), to free Gimp/Inkscape programs for raster/vector, to eventually trying out the Adobe suite of products and iPad procreate drawing. Art fundamentals go beyond any one program (a pencil and paper is more than enough to study some elements like anatomy/form/shapes/etc. well … and if I’m honest, I still use a laptop trackpad to draw for the convenience many days!) but also feeling around the workflows and techniques of different programs and tools helped me to try different things out especially without the limitations of traditional mediums (all the colors and redos I could ever want, for example!) and discover a style I enjoyed for myself along the way too
Apart from studying tutorials, practicing lots, and stepping outside your comfort zone to try new mediums or techniques, I’d also suggest if you’re interested in a more practical graphical design element to your work to see what it’s like to take commissions or paid work. This is perhaps a controversial take especially for the fine art purists haha so take it with a grain of salt if you’re concerned about supply quantities/quality or that’s not an interest of yours, but in my opinion there are so many additional skills you can learn (like communication of project details with clients, expectations setting, how to translate ideas into reality, etc.) that can really compliment pure art skills themselves in looking towards commercial style artworks, and I find you can end up really pushing yourself and upgrading the quality of your work when there is feedback and a paying customer on the other end of the line. It’s worth being careful about what you promise, having an accurate portfolio so people understand the quality of the work they’re getting (which may not be professional just yet), and being honest with yourself and clients about time, quality, etc. so everyone is on the same page and receiving appropriate value, but I think it can be an interesting avenue to pursue as you take your art to the next level.
Then when you feel like you’ve learned enough from selling your direct work and time but you’re interested in going even past that, perhaps think about trying to build your own projects to launch. In theory it’s a similar idea of having customers on the other side, but with much less direct correlation between your time and value; it both challenges you to think critically about the marketing/fit/audience elements yourself, and gives you opportunities to expand the scalability of your artistic impact!
One last piece of advice — have patience! Learning art is a journey, and no one learns overnight :)
12). As an artist who has their own artstyle, has your style changed over time? If so, how? Do you sometimes look back at really old work you have done too?
Yes! My art has changed so much over time haha, and even today I have a few different styles I feel are a bit different that I still all enjoy currently (from a lineless glowy vector art, to a colorful flowy painterly vibe) ~ would definitely say to check out my portfolio at https://www.jascolors.com/arts and peek around the different styles!
I love to look back at old work I’ve done and see how far I’ve come too (a humbling reminder that we all start at ground zero heh) — I make sure to save backups and archive all my old works so they dont disappear on me completely. It’s always so cool to see how far I’ve come, even while recognizing there is so much further to go, too!
Some of my item arts over the years — an evolution of my arts from a pretty basic black line style to somewhat fuzzy lineless to a more refined lineless style from 2007 to 2014!
Some of the older jas arts I could find heh… I was really proud when drawing these pieces, and I still am proud of them today! I think it’s totally ok and awesome to take pride in your work, even while realizing that there’s a lot of improvement to be made as well — being able to appreciate and enjoy the efforts you have put in and identifying the areas you can keep pushing to improve on don’t have to be mutually exclusive :)
13). What inspires or motivates you to create?
The audience! Just a single person appreciating or using my artwork is honestly so exciting to me. There is nothing more mind boggling or cooler to me than seeing someone irl wear my art on a shirt I might have designed in the past, and reddit avatars are like the digital version of that!
I always love making art that just makes me happy too of course, but being able to bring joy to others always feels like magic to me — being able to create something that brings to life someone else’s vision or capture their imagination feels so satisfying and like catching magic in a bottle, every time!
14). What tools do you prefer? Or is there a tool you would love to master?
Currently I prefer using Inkscape (for clean vector artwork — ps, its free and open source, if you ever want to try it yourself!) and Procreate for more freeform painterly drawing on my iPad. I upgraded recently to an iPad air so I could try out the apple pencil specifically in anticipation of signing many avatars heh, and absolutely love it so far!
I’d love to someday learn to animate like a pro. To that end I’ve always wanted to deep dive into Adobe After Effects sometime when I have time — although I’ve recently heard about the upcoming Procreate Dreams animation app, and would love to try out and master that one as well!
15). Can you show us the piece you are most proud of? And tell us why.
Hmmm, it’s hard to pick just one thing haha, but I did really enjoy this little fantasy environment piece I made — the genre/style was something entirely new to me (isometric environment art/background), and it was actually implemented as an actual map in the game it was made as fanart for! (which unfortunately was discontinued shortly after :c ) It was so cool to see people get to run around and enjoy the art in real time though! :)
Just to cheat a little (sorry haha), I wanted to throw another cool pic in too — here’s a brief view of a tiny clicker game experiment I built myself also. Even though it ended up getting taken down, I was so proud to learn unity while developing the game, in addition to the art, and I feel like programming while drawing leads to fun unique effect styles that aren’t possible to achieve otherwise (for example, using programmatically generated particle effects paired with sprite frame based animations, leads to effects you wouldn’t necessarily get as just a programmer or just a 2d illustrator alone!) I’d definitely like to get into more dev side stuff myself in the future too — if only there were unlimited time in the day!
Also okok just one more I swear this is the last bit Im so indecisive lol- this last one was a design inspired by nasa’s travel poster art style that I made for a tshirt that was given to all the interns on NASA’s JPL campus one year, and I think the extras were even sold in their official onsite company/employee store @.@ I never got to see everyone walking around with them on campus nor profited anything from the endeavor (besides a boatload of free shirts and giant box of cool nasa swag, which was more than enough for me at the time heheh :P) but it was one of the first times I was able to have my physical art be sold to people that wanted it, as well as encounter someone later allllll the way across the country wearing my art in the wild in a random passing encounter, which was so unbelievably cool!
It’s so fun to be in a place where I can continue to sell art via wearable avatar pieces with my own designs, and hopefully have lots of people across the globe enjoying them! :)
16). Who is on your wishlist to collab with? Avatar artist and non avatar artist!
There are so many incredible artists I’d love to collab with, all for different reasons!
- Rojom, Olly (seriously just such impressive artworks in general — I’m still in awe hehe)
- Lynyara, Abee Katie, Saiyre (I love their cute gorgeous fantasy vibes, thematically as a fantasy lover myself I think a collab would be so much fun!)
- Penguitt, PRguitarman (think these artists would just be so much fun to orchestrate a collab with, with such incredible, kind and generous community-centered personalities beyond just incredible artwork!)
- NatAlt, Karonuke, Kinnester, Salt, Jimmy Guo (stylistically since I tend to work with vectors most myself, I feel like it would be fun to collab with their stunning vector style artworks!)
- Tyler Foust — not only is his linework art incredible, but I believe he might have been the very first person from the rca community to follow me! We ran into each other on a twitter spaces one day and even while I was too shy to speak he was still so friendly and popping around my profile and liking things, which was just too cool ❤
There’s honestly probably tons more than that I could go on about all day — so much talent among the reddit avatar artists!
Non avatar artists dream list- (idk tbh I’m so bad at keeping good lists Dx)
- WLOP (gorgeous fantasy), Shilin (more fantasy), and hmm, I’ll get back to you, but all the avatar artists most definitely!
17). This question comes from u/ChristineMendoza: If you could be an animal that was doing something unexpected (for example, a crocodile shimmying up a skyscraper), what would it be and why?
I’d love to be a puppy pulling a little sled of boba tea around to folks on a busy city street — def a little silly haha, but I think it would bring a smile and pause to folks in an otherwise busy day, and hopefully allow them to laugh and enjoy the moment (and maybe a sweet treat, too), and that would be so worthwhile! :)
18). Last but not least: what question do you have for the next artist that we feature?
Q: If you could showcase your art in any single place of your choosing, where would it be and why?
OMG this was so long hahaha but if you made it to the end congrats, and thanks for reading! 😀