Natalie Hoopes is an illustrator, painter, and writer. She graduated from BYU and lives with her husband, a drummer, in Utah. Her new book is a collaboration with David Miles called Book.  One review called it, “One of the prettiest paeans to the codex in recent memory.”

Describe yourself as an artist. I’m an illustrator and (kind of?) fine artist who aspires to be a writer as well. There are too many things I want to do in life, so I usually just say ‘illustrator’. I tend to work with watercolor, pen and acrylic more than anything else, but I’ve also worked in oils, watercolor pencil, crayon, torn book pages, marker, India ink, charcoal, Photoshop… whatever I can get my hands on! My biggest goals in life are to write and illustrate my own picture books, young adult or middle-grade novels and possibly comics. I enjoy telling stories about dissatisfied young kids who get into trouble and I love to paint pictures of a situation that’s a little off-kilter.

What do you think about art in the Church these days? What would you like to see as Mormon art evolves? Growing up, there wasn’t a lot of Mormon art that I really related to. I felt like every image I looked at was too rosy, with lots of obedient, smiling children who looked like they loved church (which I didn’t at the time). I dismissed it altogether and decided that I never wanted anything to do with religious artwork. However, the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve learned that being an LDS artist doesn’t mean you’re restricted to painting scenes from the scriptures, or even anything typically ‘Mormon’ at all. I’ve grown to respect and appreciate the art I dismissed when I was younger (and I think those artists are probably more talented and successful than I will ever be!), but most of the artists I connect with now tend to paint more personal, spiritual scenes. Their art feels specific to their human experience, which actually makes it more relatable. I know many people who feel out of place in Church culture. Art like that can be healing.

Tell us about your experience working with J. Kirk Richards. It’s awesome! I’ve learned a ton. I work as a studio assistant a few times a week at his in-house studio and have been doing so for little over a year I think. It’s funny because I feel like are a lot of things my university professors told me not to do that Kirk is doing. And he’s doing them successfully! It’s refreshing because I feel like he follows his own instincts and isn’t afraid to try multiple things or to have many projects going at once. He’s found a good rhythm for his work. He and his wife, Amy, are great examples to me. It’s been fun to observe their happy, functional, artistic family. My husband and I have similar life goals and I feel like working with Kirk and the other studio assistants has opened up a lot of doors.

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Carter Thompson is an illustrator and scenic designer. Thompson describes himself as ‘well-bred and corn-fed’ and he lives in Harlem.

Tell us about your art. I have always been a storyteller, and that’s my main goal with my art. I try to tell stories; to expose some facet of the human condition. I think that is the purpose of art, and the purpose of life. To learn what it means to be human. Mostly my art focuses on people and characters and trying to capture some moment in their journey, however strange or whimsical it might be. I studied Theatre Arts with an emphasis in scenic design at BYU, which gave me a terrific education in not only art and history, but communicating, collaborating, and storytelling. After graduation I moved to New York and I’ve been working here as a freelance artist and designer for the past two years.

You describe your style as “dark sophistication and witty effervescence”. Explain. I have always been fascinated by the idea of using humor to understand heavier things. That old expression, “truth is best told in jest” really resonates with me. So when I think of humans and the human experience, I always try to capture that in a bubbly, lively way. I admire artists like Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, and Quentin Blake, who had this great ability to infuse light-heartedness into serious situations. They could make strange things charming. I like to explore the line between what is grotesque and what is lovely. Along with that, I love storytelling and I think wit and humor are great ways to explore truth. I think of it as a sort of winking self-awareness that reveals aspects of the human experience.

What do you gain and lose from working digitally? So far, it’s been very positive to transition into the realm of digital art. I think I was leery of it in the beginning because of this stigma of a cut-and-paste insincere sort of art, but that’s really not how I work at all. I view my stylus and my iPad as tools, just like paint and pencils. In fact, working digitally opens the door for new artistic possibilities in certain situations. I can mix “mediums” in ways that I never could in real life. Switching around every five seconds from pencils to oils to watercolors in the same project would be much more complicated and costly without the aid of digital technology. That being said, if a project is better suited for a more traditional medium I definitely go in that direction. I still love to get my hands dirty in the studio. Working digitally also allows me the freedom to work almost anywhere, which is very inspiring to me. I’ll work on a project in the park, the lobby of the Waldorf, on a subway, there are infinite possibilities. I have a fully stocked studio anywhere I go. It’s liberating.

Your Instagram account is a cultured tour of New York architecture. You include quotes from Stephen Collins Foster, Jawaharial Nehru, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I didn’t intentionally set out to create an Instagram full of architecture, but I think it came naturally out of living in New York. I always try to capture images and stories that inspire or edify me, and in Manhattan there are just so many lovely and interesting buildings. They surround you everywhere you go. Every building has a story, and because it’s New York, I suppose, the history for every noteworthy building is well documented. As far as the quotes and literature I like to post, I think that comes out of my love of reading. I collect quotes and phrases, and have found that sometimes I express my thoughts best by using someone else’s words. Literature sparks a lot of my creative ideas. My art is often born out of a phrase from a poem or short story I read. I take that idea and build my own thing out of it. I like to think I have had a positive reception so far. Most of my art commissions come from Instagram, which is something I never would have dreamed of a few years ago. It’s a wonderful platform to connect with people, create, and share my work.

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Alex Nabaum is a phenomenal illustrator. He began his full-time freelance career in 2004 and his body of high-quality work is astonishing. Do a Google Image search for ‘Alex Nabaum’ and you will find dozens and dozens of erudite works of art. His clients include The New York Times, ESPN, Wired, the Economist, and The Wall Street Journal. He graduated from Utah State University and lives in Utah.

You are incredibly creative with your concepts. How do you maintain that level of innovation? Persistance I guess. Some people have the patience to create intricate levels of detail. Something I wish I had. For now though, I seem to have the patience to create large piles of rejected ideas, while hunting for a good one.

What tools do you use? HB pencils, copy paper, lightbox, gouache, crescent cold press illustration board, frisket film, brayers, brush, scanner, and Photoshop. But if I’m doing bas relief I change to metal sheets, embossing tools, enamel paint, Nikon camera, lighting, and Photoshop.

You do a lot of media work. How tight are your deadlines? Depends on the publication. For monthly magazines 1-2 weeks. For weekly publications 2-3 days. For daily newspapers 1 day to a few hours. My tightest deadline was a piece on the future of Korea, for The New York Times, at 45 minutes.

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Sarah Thulin is a talented illustrator and digital artist. She describes herself as an ‘Illustrator, Writer/Poet, Music Lover, Dreamer’.

Tell us a little about yourself. By day I am Sarah Thulin: mild mannered illustrator, but by night I am SarahCulture: mild mannered illustrator on the internet! When I’m not making art you can most often find me inhaling stories in all formats, and playing with concocting my own, as well as being crazy with my wonderfully crazy family. I do graphic design in addition to illustration, and am an all around art nerd.

I love your brand and logo. Tell us about your approach to ‘selling’ yourself as an artist. Thank you very much! My logo actually originated when I was thirteen or fourteen if you can believe it. I had learned about a beautiful writing system called square word developed by the artist Xu Bing. It’s a sort of a visual code that translates words written in the roman alphabet into art reminiscent of Chinese characters. I used the system to compose a character for my name and began to sign drawings with it. When I started getting more serious about art I knew I needed to decide on a signature; I experimented with a few other things, but quickly found that I liked my square word chop best. As far as “selling myself” goes I don’t know that I have any carefully planed strategy, but I do put time, effort, and thought into marketing my work. I like actively putting art into the world and I try to have consistent quality to my work and to its presentation when I do. I try to integrate my brand into the presentation; I find this creates a sort of a visual “package” that makes my work more memorable as a whole.

Tell us about the tools you like to use both traditional and digital. For finished pieces I mainly use watercolors and Photoshop, as well as some acrylics and a little illustrator. I use watercolors because they appeal to my sense of color; I like how using them you can layer two vibrant colors and see both of them at the same time. I also discovered that using one of those sketchbook water well brushes I’m able to add nice, clean, brightly colored line work to my paintings, which has been an invaluable tool. As far as Photoshop goes, I use it in nearly everything I do. All of my sketches go through a scan, Photoshop, print, draw over, and repeat process before I sit down to do the finished painting, whether it be traditional or digital. Even after I’ve “finished” a traditional painting I often make several digital tweaks. I’m a big believer in the “fix it in Photoshop mentality, personally, I find it frees me up to take the risks I need to make my painting better in the long run. I also like doing more heavily digital work, but I always try to bring a traditional element in. I do my line work with a brush pen then scan it and lay in color in Photoshop. I often play with multiply, soft light, and overlay layers to add some dimension and interest, but when it comes down to it I tend to like things pretty flat and simple.

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Annie Poon is an animator and illustrator with a captivating and upbeat style. Poon’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and has worked with organizations that include the Brooklyn Academy of Art, Pfizer, Nickelodeon, and the LDS Church. She lives with her husband, photographer Kah Poon, in New York City.

Describe yourself as an artist. As an artist, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I think people who like my work can see it is very rough and playful. Whether I’m painting, doodling, or animating, my work is very autobiographical. I mostly spend my time making stop motion animation shorts made from cut paper that are based on memories of childhood and adolescence. Sometimes I work for clients but primarily show my work in fine art settings. I have an alter ego named Puppy who I use to express poignant feelings and experiences, whether joyful, awkward, heartbroken, or manic. He has become a powerful conduit for me because he enables me to talk about any subject in a light way. I know some people have to talk through puppets, ha ha… I speak best through Puppy. Recently I’ve have started illustrating books to my delight, that was always my dream as a kid.

You have said, “Making people happy is just as important as any other issue.” Explain. For a long time I suffered from depression. It went on for at least ten years. Adding to the anxiety of always being sad, I felt the burden of not feeling like a productive member of society. I wasn’t making social change or mothering children. I felt useless and lost and actually stopped making art so I could figure things out. Then I remembered the scriptures where they talk about how Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like the lilies, and began to notice the incredible diversity of life around me. What was the point of all this random beauty? I realized that Heavenly Father had taken great pains in creating it to bring about happiness. And that creating an animation or a painting was like adding a flower to the bouquet wild, beautiful of organisms I was seeing in Central Park during my daily wanderings. I realized God took great joy in creating delicate wildflowers someone might never even see. There must be a justification in this. And I remembered that ‘men are that they might have joy’. Joy is a priority with the Lord. So if I can create a piece that brings a respite from someone’s sense of overwhelming and sadness, I am following the pattern that Lord has set and adding one more doorway for someone to escape their own anxiety even if just for a few moments.

What is your approach to a new animation? I start each animation with a key image. It could be a picture by me or someone else that expresses the mood that I want to evoke. For instance, some of my darker work is inspired by a particular Goya etching called ‘the Dream of Reason’. I then do a couple of pages of character designs, I like for each animation to be a little different in technique, whether it be a different color palate, new genre for the soundtrack, etc. I set up rules like ‘these four markers only’ or ‘cram it into 20 seconds’, fun little challenges like that. I write or help compose the music and never move on to the next scene until I have completely edited and polished what I have just shot. It usually takes me a day to animate about 5 seconds but sometimes I spend a couple of days re-shooting a scene again and again because my husband offers funny little twists or because it doesn’t have the magic yet.

Your husband once said, “Annie’s aim is to express how she feels.” Has how you feel changed over the years with regards to your art? I have a feeling of safety and courage when I’m working, because of my dedicated studio space and my husband’s support. There is no judgment in my home regarding my work. I feel very lucky to be able to go wherever my heart happens to be at the time. It keeps things authentic and fresh because as I grow and change, so does the work. For example, the animation I am working on now comes from some dark places. The mood in the first half is very scary because it deals with confusing family issues and mental illness. But I had to go there and I love the way those scenes turned out, with so many layers of feeling in the visuals and the music. Things usually feel incoherent when I’m working on them but once it’s all said and done with I can always see my story coming through pretty clearly.

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