Dylan Bonner is an amazing illustrator and freelance artist from Michigan, United States. He graduated from Ringling College of Art in Florida. He is most known for his lovely mermaids, Disney fanart, and comics. His use of shapes and colors is awesome and his illustrations are full of life and joy. They make me smile every time I look at them! He contributed to the project Rescue Sirens by Jessica and Chris Sanders and his work was also featured in BuzzFeed when he drew one gentleman’s girlfriend into Disney princesses 🙂
Get in touch with Dylan
- DeviantArt: https://dylanbonner.deviantart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylanbonner90/
- Society6: https://society6.com/dylanbonner
Key Takeaways
“If you are feeling stressed about your artwork or if it’s not coming together, just take a deep breath. It will happen when it is meant to happen. You got your own pace so do what feels natural to you.”
- For Dylan, the college was a portfolio prep work
- Dylan struggled a little bit to find his own style because in college every piece looked like it was done by a different artist. He took inspiration from the book Lovely and from Lorelay Bove pieces and he tried to see what he likes about it and what he wants to take and apply for his own stuff.
- Best advice to find your own style is to find a blend between your art and art you like, study the fundamentals, study other artists and blend it all together
- Dylan takes his social media following as a support base. When he went freelance, he had 10k fans. He recommends doing fan art to build up a fanbase
- As a freelancer, Dylan always saves up for the ‘dry’ weeks. This helps him to manage the budget better.
Resources mentioned
Note: some of the resources below may be affiliate links, meaning I get paid a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you use that link to make a purchase.
- University which Dylan attended: Ringling College
- Lorelay Bove – one of the artists from whom Dylan took his inspiration
- Books for artistic inspiration
- Art books – The Art of Little Mermaid
- Lorelay Bove – Lovely: Ladies of Animation
- Project Dylan contributed to – Rescue Sirens by Chris Sanders
- Art tools:
- iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and ProCreate App – every time you lift up the pencil it saves your artwork
Thanks for Watching and Listening!
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Special thanks to Dylan for joining me today. See you next time!
All artworks by Dylan Bonner, used with permission
