Clever Collage Illustration & Story Telling with Hollie Chastain
Episode 349 Aired June 17, 2020
Our guest this week is Hollie Chastain. I have been a huge fan of Hollie’s work for years and I am so glad to share her story and have her share her creative process and creative journey with us this week.
Are you an illustrator that is designing because you haven’t found your style or niche yet?
Do you want to know how to pivot and go from full-time designer to full-time illustrator?
Do you know how to get work as an illustrator? Who to contact? Who to connect with?
Have you thought about teaching your illustration process to others through workshops? Or by writing a book?
Do you love seeing a story unfold in an illustration?
Do you love collage?
Do you love seeing design foundations at work in illustration?
I’ve been looking forward to interviewing Hollie for a while. Honestly I love her work so much that I was intimidated to ask her to be on the show. She is super nice and easy going. But have you ever loved someone’s work so much that you were afraid of fan-girling on them and turning them away. Well that was me. Even after over 330 interviews I still get butterflies.
I ask Hollie questions about going from designer to illustrator, about her brainstorming process, about selling her art to customers, and how she gets illustration work. We also talk about communicating a story in a single piece.
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- Hollie can you give us a little background about your life and business before you started focusing on illustrating?
- Going from designer to illustrator / artist /author / teacher, is a lot of different roles. How have you brought design into the art you create for commissions or client projects? How do you bring design into your workshops?
- Your collages always amaze me. How you are able to find the right colors, the right person looking just the right way. You are able to say so much with your curation of items. Can you take us through your process? You talked about having cutting days, what does that mean?
- To me, what you do seems like magic, but you teach workshops on this and you share many design basics but one you utilize a lot is minimalism. Why is that so hard for people and especially people with collage?
- Do you find it hard to communicate an idea in a single piece of art? You seem to tell such rich stories and I am in awe of your abilities.
- How do you brainstorm your ideas? How often do you go through your stacks? Do you do that before you sit down to sketch if you are trying to create a piece with a certain message?
- How do you sell your work? How did you start doing that? Were you showing in galleries regularly pre-COVID?
- What kinds of things were you doing to get illustration commissions? Were you creating for yourself and posting? How did you get connected with other collage illustrators and paper artists?
- Your book is AWESOME! I asked for it for Christmas in 2017. It inspired me so much during my sabbatical in 2018 and in some self-driven projects. What kind of side projects have you taken on or do you do now that keeps you fresh?
- How do you recharge? What inspires you?
- Is there a quote or something that you keep close to help you get through tough times?
- What is next?
Follow Hollie
Website! Her shop is linked through here. https://www.holliechastain.com/
IG. https://www.instagram.com/holliechastain/
Twitter. https://twitter.com/HollieArt
Non-Amazon place to get her book. 🙂 https://bookshop.org/books/if-you-can-cut-you-can-collage-from-paper-scraps-to-works-of-art/9781631593352
Go to Camp with me: @creativesignite
https://creativesignite.com