Griselda a.k.a. Lord Gris is currently working as a Game assets designer. She creates most of her artworks digitally and she also produces prints and stickers from her creations. She is gradually growing her Instagram fan base and supporting them with great advice such as:
“You may not notice you’re improving, but someday you’ll look back and be grateful for all the times you kept making art you thought was bad. Bad art is necessary for your growth”
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Get in touch with Lord Gris
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lord_gris/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LordGriselda/
- Etsy: https://artsideoflife.com/lordgrisetsy
Key Takeaways
“If I knew that all the practice that I did when I was younger would pay off so much, I would have done it way more.”
- People are not afraid of the hard work, they are afraid their hard work will not result in anything. Every time Lord Gris thinks her hard work will not get her anywhere, she just tries to think otherwise and it brings the results
- Best advice Lord Gris ever got was, that you should take advice from people who have/did what you want
- In order to make it, you need to have a great content through proper practice – e.g. realistic lightning can translate to any style you want, figure drawing classes teach you how to draw the human body naturally and proper people skills and networking skills – It helped her to grow her Instagram platform so much
- When starting, don’t be too eager so people take advantage of you. Respect yourself and your art
Resources mentioned
- Artists that inspired Lord Gris
- Happy D Artist
- Humans of NY – photographer
- Bob Ross
- Art tools
- Books
- How to win friends and influence people – Dale Carnegie
- Hooked – habit-forming products
- Bob Burg: Go Giver
- Movie – Kimi no na wa (Your name) – she seen it 3x by now – she feels super inspired – beautiful animation and illustration
Special thanks to Lord Gris for joining me today. See you next time!
All artworks by Lord Gris, used with permission
Episode Transcript
Announcer
Creative, artistic, happy! That’s you. There are endless possibilities for living a creative life. So let’s inspire each other. Art Side of Life interviews with Iva.
Iva Mikles
Hello, everyone and welcome to the next episode of Art Side of Life, where it’s all about how you can turn your creative passion into a profession. My name is Iva, and my guest today is a freelance artist, Illustrator and game as a designer from Portland, Oregon. She is most known for drawing cute, pretty female characters. And she created most of her artwork digitally producing prints and stickers for her Etsy store. She’s now learning to get better at traditional art, because as she says, it’s always great to have creations hanging on their wall. She’s gradually growing her Instagram fan base of over 100,000 followers and supporting them with great advice and encouragement. She dreams of traveling the world and doing gallery shows in many towns. So please welcome Brazil that also known as Lord Gris, and let’s get to the interview. So I would like to start with a question from the beginning. Like, if you knew always that you want to be a designer or as an artist when you were a child.
Lord Gris
You know, I think art was something I always did enjoy doing. Initially when I was a child and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was sort of paleontologist because I liked dinosaurs a lot. I wanted to dig up dinosaur bones. But as I got older, especially in high school, I was like I think I’m gonna pursue art as a career for sure.
Iva Mikles
Yeah. And what were the biggest decisions or like turning points which you had to do in order to pursue art proficiently?
Lord Gris
So, I mean, it was a bit of a process for sure. In high school, you know, I was like, Oh, I’m going to do art, I’m going to be an artist, I got voted, you know, most artistic and got all these scholarships to a private art college. And yeah, I ended up with this private art college and I made it like a year and a half before quitting. You know, the community shocked me, I think I wasn’t, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know myself well enough. And I didn’t really know where I was going or what I wanted to pursue. And I saw these people that were so passionate about what they did. And my style was really frowned upon at the school that I was at and kind of culminated in this like teacher shouting at me during class one day who he was like shouting at me like that I was uncreative and I was never gonna go anywhere in the art world. And yeah, it made me really sad. It was very heartbreaking. And I ended up dropping out of school and being like, well, maybe arts, not for me, maybe I should go do art, and ended up getting like a retail job and working retail for a while. And that was kind of this this long stretch of time, that was like this dark period in my life a little bit where I was working retail. And I had contracted this like chronic illness at the same time. Yeah, so that was rough. I never got an official name for it, either. But I was always in pain, couldn’t eat anything. I was always nauseous. And so I was like, I ended up having to quit my job because of it and was stuck in my house a lot being like, well, what should I do with my time and I tried doing a fashion blog, I tried writing novels I tried, you know, so many different things. Until I just I hit a point where I was like, I’m so depressed right now.
Iva Mikles
So how did you overcome this? Or what kind of made you or motivated you to start doing art again, or basically whatever would kind of help you to go through this? Yeah.
Lord Gris
So to get through that, you know, I, I hit this point where I was like, just like, very, very, like extremely depressed. And most days was like, oh, man, if I get in the car, I hope we get into a car crash. And I just like die, because everything’s really really hard right now. I don’t exactly know how to describe it. I was like, I was playing a video game one day. And, you know, I don’t know if you know this concept. But when you play video games, there’s something called grinding, or you’ll just sit there and like, kill the same enemy over and over and over and over so that you can level up and I was like, this is dull and boring. But I’m willing to do this because I know it’ll get me to the high level I want to be at Yeah, I was like, why don’t why don’t I do this in my real life? Why don’t I do this stuff that’s dull and boring, and hard to get me to where I want to go in my real life. I just at this point. I said I’m tired of sitting around and complaining. I’m tired of saying that I’m depressed and not going anywhere. It’ll never amount to anything when I haven’t even tried, really. But if I hadn’t seen Yeah, that’s really
Iva Mikles
good analogy kind of when you talk about like, Okay, well, you can notice something in a game or, or whatever magazine book and then you can apply it to your life with in a helpful way. I think that’s great.
Lord Gris
Yeah, I think there’s, you know, a lot of people say people are afraid of hard work, but I don’t think people are afraid of hard work. I think they’re afraid that all the hard work they do isn’t going to result in anything. They’re afraid that the hard work is not going to get them anywhere. So I said, Okay, anytime I think my hard work is not going to get me anywhere. I’m going to try and just think in my head, no, this is going to get me where I want to go. And approach it the same way I’d approach a video game kind of thing.
Iva Mikles
Yeah. And what, or who inspired you in the past? Did you have a mentor or someone who helped you to with a good advice? Or?
Lord Gris
You know, I honestly, I didn’t have a mentor, but someone that I did watch. I don’t know if you know, happy D artist?
Iva Mikles
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, her are
Lord Gris
so beautiful. And I had a friend who actually knew her. Right when she was getting started, like, she didn’t really have any followers or anything. And he was like, Oh, this is my friend, she just quit her job to start pursuing art. I was like, Oh, that’s pretty neat. You know, we’ll see how that goes. I remember just checking in on her page A little while later. And being like, holy cow, this girl exploded, and she makes the kind of art that I want to make. She just draws these pretty women. And like, that’s what I was wanting to do. But was told you can’t do it. And seeing her kind of take that and become successful with it really inspired me to be like, Okay, I can be successful. I want to do that as well.
Iva Mikles
Yeah. When you said your goals, and you know what you want to go for? Sure. Yeah. And what do you think? What was your like best advice, or the worst advice you’ve ever received?
Lord Gris
I definitely think that the worst advice I received was being told that I couldn’t be successful with what I wanted to do. And then I was on creative. Because that, you know, that really stopped me. But the best advice I got was when people I met some people who told me like, you should take advice from the people who have what you want. Because it’s so often that we take advice from people who care about us from like, our parents, or friends or whatever. And they’re like, Oh, you want to be an artist? Well, you should do this, or you shouldn’t do that. And those people actually don’t know anything probably about what it takes or what you need to do to become a successful artists. And so kind of changing my focus and looking towards the people who did have what I want and reaching out to them, or if anything, just watching their YouTube channels, like made such a huge difference to me.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, because I was also mentioning it in some other interviews now that I also had the same influence, like, people were telling me like, oh, by the way, you cannot leave from art. So you should just study something normal. And that’s why I studied Business and Management. Maybe the best advice, but still, I mean, look at it from the positive side, you can always like, take something good out of every experience.
Lord Gris
Yeah, definitely.
Iva Mikles
So when you’re creating now artworks, and all the illustrations, what would be your vision or mission? Or how would you describe your your brand? Or what do you put in your illustrations?
Lord Gris
Yeah, so I feel like my brand is kind of twofold. I mean, there’s the content that I create. And then there’s kind of the, the personality that I want to reach out to people. So I definitely, I just enjoy things that are cute and pretty and make me happy, and might have like a slight eerie air to them. But something that’s always been really huge to me is that I’ve always wanted to impact people. And I’ve always enjoyed artists that have been able to use their platform to impact the world around them. So there’s a photographer named Humans of New York, I don’t know if you know him. Yes. Yeah. He’s so amazing. You know, he’s he’s creating such a positive network of people with the positive messages that he shows around. And he’s able to fund pretty much, you know, any noble cause that’s out there. And I love that I love Bob Ross. And I love even like Mr. Rogers and stuff. I think that people who grew up with these people, they’re adults now. And they’re able to kind of talk about how that person made them feel like they could do anything, you know. And so I think for my platform, like I definitely love being a content creator, but even more, so I love having kind of a large voice where I’m able to influence other people and inspire other people, which is like so huge. So what I do, and I think even bigger than being an artist is that’s really significant to me.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, actually, that inspired me as well. Like when I heard about the Humans of New York and looking at all of these stories, and I was like, Oh, these should be also in art. So this was one that we do. I created this because I think as you said, like inspiring each other and help each other grow. I think that’s really important. So yeah,
Lord Gris
it’s beautiful. Saying I love when people can use their art to impact the world.
Iva Mikles
So I’m really happy that you also join us here and like others. So that’s really cool. And so what I wanted to ask you as well about the inspiration because most of the people love to hear where the artists get the inspiration from, and maybe what is the weirdest thing to to inspire you as well.
Lord Gris
I think a lot of my inspiration will just come from like, pictures that I see other artists out there. I love probably the weirdest thing that inspires me is food. I love food, and I draw it a lot and it doesn’t end up on my page a lot. But I’ve been meaning to do like a Whole Foods series. obsessed with it. Yeah, they see like clothes with food print on it. I like instantly buy it like I’m just a sucker for food things.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, because you have one, which I remember where it was with honey and bees. So that’s also a bit of a food. But yeah, you can definitely push it with other stuff.
Lord Gris
Oh, yeah, the first large painting I made. The girl just has like whipped cream on her head. She’s like dripping hot chocolate. Like,
Iva Mikles
really cool. Yeah. Because, like different emotions as well with the viewers. Also, we have the differ from different artists, and what else can you bring for clients?
Lord Gris
Hmm, how am I different from other artists? I don’t know. I think, Oh, that’s a hard question. It’s kind of all art. All art is very different. And I often wonder what makes a client choose one artists over another. Like people will hit me up and say, oh, I want you to draw my family portrait. And I’m like, why did you choose me over? You know, all these other artists that I feel like are far more talented than I am? Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know what I bring to the table. It’s different.
Iva Mikles
It’s different that also like, yeah, as you said, like positive and happy approach. So they always see these and then that’s why they choose you because they want to have the same impact on their life, probably.
Lord Gris
I hope so. Yeah.
Iva Mikles
That’s what I would assume. And so if someone would want to do what they do now, what do you think they should start with? Maybe what you started with, and what you’re using now, maybe some mediums and tools, if you can mention?
Lord Gris
Definitely, um, so I’ll use a mix of, honestly, all kinds of things, pretty much whatever I can get my hands on. But a lot of what I do is done with sketching on paper and then overlaying color with the digital program. Definitely, I use a Microsoft Surface Pro for coloring things. I think it’s a great tool. But I think if someone wanted to do what I do now, there’d be two things that I would suggest specifically, first of all, making sure that you have good content, which can be done through practice, I think a lot of people neglect, like proper practice. So like, studying lighting, like finding a photograph that has really good lighting, and then trying to replicate it as well as you can, you know, even if you don’t want to draw a realistic style, learning, realistic lighting will translate in any style you want. And, you know, attending figure drawing classes, you know, just teaches you how to draw the body really naturally. But they think the other thing that artists like, really neglect is learning proper people skills and networking skills. That was honestly the biggest difference. I had my Instagram platform for a year, I had 200 followers. And then I read some books on on how to have good people skills and how to properly connect with people and how to leave people feeling good about themselves. And I’m done talking to them. And that’s like applying those principles is what led my platform to grow to what it is. And now and so I encourage everyone I’m like do not neglect the significance of, of being able to connect with people because you know, the most important thing you can do is make a person feel valued and appreciated. And they’ll want to help you forever.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, and so whether was the book, or what they should read. I mean, even listening to this,
Lord Gris
okay, the ultimate book, I tell everyone to read this, I don’t know if anyone ever has but it’s called How to Win Friends and Influence People. The title sounds weird, but it’s a good book. It’s such a good book, you just learned so many significant things of higher smiling and making sure you use people’s names and you know, all these good little tips.
Iva Mikles
There is also a book called Hooked habit forming products. And this one is also quite interesting because it’s like, what motivations people have, you know, to buy products or follow other people. That’s yeah, but it shouldn’t be used for evil.
Lord Gris
Definitely not no use the time value to people. That’s what you got to do.
Iva Mikles
So and how do you design your day? When you have like, of course, you probably plan ahead or do you?
Lord Gris
Oh, yeah, I definitely I usually have like my whole week scheduled out. The average day for me kind of goes like, I’ll wake up, I’ve usually made like a sketch the day before that I’ll color I’ll post that. I’ll answer all my emails and try to put out any orders I get from like my etsy store. And then I get to like the commission work that I’m working on. And then in the evening, if I have time, after all that I work on personal projects, because I really want I actually ultimately would like to be a painter. But I don’t have a ton of time to make paintings. And so they’re kind of a thing that I get to when I have spare time.
Iva Mikles
So painting, like a traditional painting galleries style,
Lord Gris
I would love it. I would love to put my work up in galleries. And you know, does it like I love making digital art, it creates an effect that I really enjoy. And it’s very pretty, but I always feel so much more accomplished when I have something that’s real. And it’s up on the wall. And people can walk in and they see it in the Oh, wow. It’s so beautiful. Yeah.
Iva Mikles
And you have now a mentor, right? You mentioned for traditional.
Lord Gris
Yeah. Oh, man, Matt, he’s great. I actually, I initially met him because I wanted to make a video game. And I needed a background artist. And he was a local painter that made really cool painting. So I hit him up, try to hire him. But my game ended up going nowhere. And we kind of remained friends anyway. And after a long while, I hit him up. I was like, okay, man, you paint so good. You please drink. He’s like, okay, come to my studio. And, you know, he just let me come to the studio and I read spare time is very nice, very generous guy, because he doesn’t have a lot of free time. But, you know, we’ve just been buddies for a long while now I’ve moved into the studio, a little space in his space. So
Iva Mikles
it’s a you go to the studio every day, or
Lord Gris
every day. Honestly, it’s pretty far from my house, it takes me about 45 minutes to get there. So I usually end up going about once a week. And I’m mainly there. I mean, I’m there, you know, to get training from him a little bit. And also the studio itself is it’s four stories, 50 artists, it’s like the top artists in my city. And so getting to be around them, you know, it’s so significant to be around the people who do what you want to do you learn from them. And so, for me, it’s worth it to be in that space to just kind of like absorb their talent and
Iva Mikles
and so normally do you work from home?
Lord Gris
Yeah, normally, I work from home. So I’m kind of like, I’m a little bit of a shadow. And I’m like, It’s been three days and I haven’t seen another human being.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, that’s my goal. So for a coffee or yoga or something. Humans
Lord Gris
see human contact, I forgot what you look like.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, I’m the same. So for sure. And you know, you had the exhibition also in the studio, right? Can you tell us?
Lord Gris
Well, that was the whole studio had an open house. And so people just they wanted to see the building, it’s normally closed off to the public. But one day a year, they open it up, and people can tour the spaces. And I mean, it was amazing. I wasn’t expecting so many people to show up, I think about 1000 people filtered through that room. And I mean, my table was very popular with the children. A lot of the art in the building is like it’s really fine art are like very abstract and stuff. And so the kids would be like, this is boring mom and dad, they find my table. They’re like, Oh, unicorn girls. I think everything I sold was either two kids or two people saying they’re gonna take it home to their kids. So I’m like, Alright, I know my age group.
Iva Mikles
Exactly. Find your target group, which is really important.
Lord Gris
Yeah. But it was wonderful. So wonderful to talk to so many people, there’s so many people that they want to make art, and they don’t know how to get started. And they just want to ask a million questions on how to do it and things like that. And so it’s great to be able to talk to people and kind of encourage them like that.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, for sure. And also like, is your motivating a lot of other people? How do you motivate yourself or some things which inspires you to continue so you don’t feel stuck?
Lord Gris
You know, I used to have a really hard time motivating myself used to be just like, oh, every now and then I’d get around to making a piece of art like when I felt like it. But motivation is not really like a hard problem for anymore. And I think it’s because I have like I have a dream. I have somewhere I want to get to I have a goal. And I know that it’s possible to get there. I think having a dream and knowing you can get there, you know, you work your butt off like crazy. Once you start seeing results like that. There’s so many things I would love to do, you know, and love to make, you know, like an art book. That’d be super cool. And there’s so many artists out there that I really always looked up to that I’ve always wanted to get a chance to talk to you. And so in my mind, it’s like, oh, man, I have to become so amazing art to earn their attention, kind of earn the ability to get to talk to them someday. And so I work hard every day just because I’m so excited about being able to get there.
Iva Mikles
Yeah but also talking to many artists now they always say like, don’t like be afraid to reach out to them. So they are most, most of the time, they are really happy to help. So I think that that’s really nice. And sometimes they they might be busy, but they say like, Okay, you should always follow up, which was one of the interviews I just had recently because sometimes artists or other people, like reach out to them. And they say, oh, sorry, I’m really busy, and they never ride them back. So it’s also quite an interesting approach. I was like, yeah, actually, that’s, that’s true. Just to follow up if you really want something.
Lord Gris
Yeah, definitely keep trying. Like I it means a lot to me when people like send me a really nice message where they’re just like, kind of feeling lost in the world and was hoping you could help me figure out how to get on track. I pretty much will always answer those messages. There’s a lot of other like, random messages that I might not if someone just messages me and says stop. I’m probably gonna take the time to write me like an earnest, heartfelt paragraph. I’m like, dang, girl. Yeah, I’ll help you out.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, exactly. So yeah. And so with the project, so they are working now, is there something really exciting happening now or something upcoming in the future?
Lord Gris
There might be a game project, but I’m not allowed to talk about it. There’s that. And I’m also maybe working on a coloring book. So there’s also that
Iva Mikles
you said, Oh, so you have an Etsy store. And then you work as a part time? How do you combine your income streams or what is your main income stream,
Lord Gris
I would say the largest chunk of income comes from commissioned work, which is all over the place people want tattoos made they want portraits of their kids or their pets are drawing their favorite anime character. That’s a pretty consistent like, I always have permissions to work on turning people down half the time. But then there’s also my etsy store on the side, which is nice and then selling original artwork, which is not as common because they don’t make it as much but there’s so and that all together is kind of where all my income comes from, but I feel like I’m still fairly new to the concept of monetizing my art. I’ve only been monetizing it since February. In general, like I’ve only been at this art thing for a year and so I’m like still flailing around figuring it out. My ultimate goal is to kind of get to Patreon and have Patreon be the main source of my income that I know that that’s going to building a successful Patreon requires a whole new level of output so not ready for that level yet
Iva Mikles
promoting and creating content and everything Oh, yeah,
Lord Gris
I gotta learn how to video edit and take make speed paints and stuff like that’s
Iva Mikles
so you’re not doing the speed paint yet?
Lord Gris
I do not know how. Yeah, I would love to Yeah, people asked me all the time. Like can you make speed drawings? Can you make 3d paintings? And I’m like, I need to get a camera that can hold 30 hours of footage first. Yeah, and then we’ll see.
Iva Mikles
Or maybe you can just do it on the phone if you have enough memory you know, like when Yeah, because I just bought also this like simple holder for a phone and I still need to edit some of the videos I made. But I found out that it’s just you can just spit up the whole thing that is just one button. And that’s it.
Lord Gris
Nice that’d be great. So
Iva Mikles
it depends which program they use but some of the Adobe programs or some of the free ones as well you can just like make it faster and you know just publish yeah
Lord Gris
oh my gosh there’s still so much I’m learning about how to do all this it’s very new
Iva Mikles
so I need to progress and so when you say those are you have a different project and commissions How do you decide what to say yes and no to
Lord Gris
a lot of it has to do with the content that’s being asked for I used to take on every commission back when they were kind of rare and I’m really glad that I’ve kind of hit the point where I can like turn down the weird ones like people being like oh drop me these like sexy diet women and I’m like you know or more so like people will ask for things that aren’t at all what you do the wanton drawings of like cars or like very geometric like buildings and stuff and I’m like that’s not really like in my skill set but let me direct you to an artist who is really good at that you’ll probably be much happier with your commission if you ask them. So I try to kind of like stick to things that are within my skill range that I know that all will come from making it’ll be worth my time and they’ll be happy with ultimately because you know that I want to make them happy. So that’s usually what I end up
Iva Mikles
doing. Yeah. And so how do you find the new paid projects or? Or collaborations because you mentioned the mostly it’s from social networks right like Instagram, but is it something else as well like do go for events and other networking?
Lord Gris
No, I It shocks me, honestly, shocks me. When people want commissioned work and are willing to like ask about it, I didn’t, I thought it’d be a really rare thing. But having, you know, I don’t look for it at all, I just get tons of emails and tons of messages in my inbox just being like, you know, people having really neat commission ideas, you know, really cool tattoo ideas out there that I’m always excited to do. Yeah.
Iva Mikles
Oh, that’s really nice. So I didn’t, you know, like people, I mean, I don’t really have requests for tattoo designs, but actually really cool. So yeah, it wasn’t thinking about it. And so how would you plan your week? Would you use like Google Calendar, or the use the traditional tools, like, diary or something like that?
Lord Gris
Oh, my gosh, it’s mostly just like scribble down and like a page of my sketchbook being like, don’t forget, so and so I was commissioned and email so and so back, I wish I was more organized. I need to get Google calendar because, yeah, it would save my life, I think.
Iva Mikles
What do you wish you knew before you started the whole career?
Lord Gris
Ah, let’s see. I think I wish I knew. Ah, kind of how to respect myself and how to respect my art. I think when you first first get started, you’re just like, kind of so eager to do things that you’re a little too nice. And you end up getting taken advantage of. There were a lot of times like when I first started this out, like when I did commission work, I do a bunch of commission work for people and say, Oh, you can pay me when I’m done. And there’s so many commissions I’ve done, I’ve never been paid for. And I hit this point. I was like, Okay, we do payment up front now. All right, I start when I get paid kind of thing. So and so.
Iva Mikles
So what would you advise young artists, which are just starting this? If they’re asked to do commission? Do you ask for a house payment before and then you deliver like a sketch first? Or how is this process?
Lord Gris
So the way my process goes, is, you know, well, yeah, we will discuss what the person wants in great detail, so that I have like a really good idea. I asked him for a lot of reference photos, usually, you know, if they’re like, oh, you know, I want you to draw me my boyfriend. I’m like, okay, so pictures of you guys, and send me pictures of the kind of clothes you want to be wearing and things like that. And so I’ll start when they pay me. And the first thing I’ll do is send them over a sketch for them to approve, I want to make sure that they like the pose, and then I’ll send them a couple updates, as I’m coloring it. And when I get to the end, I usually will say you can change like, you know, one or two small things. Most people don’t usually want to change anything, because they’ve seen it along the way. So that’s good. But yeah, it used to be that I would just let people change things indefinitely. And sometimes I’d spend like two months on something and then being like, no, change that change that change that. And then I wouldn’t even get paid. And it was just, yeah.
Iva Mikles
And do you send them right away? Like full resolution picture? Or do you like, send them a small image before? And then when you get the payment, then you provide the full picture?
Lord Gris
Well, I mean, the little payment before even start, okay, so
Iva Mikles
So then then yeah, so, okay, yeah.
Lord Gris
At the end, they just get in the forest solution picture.
Iva Mikles
Yeah. And then you have maybe two or few fixes to change at the end. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that makes sense. But it’s really good to know. Because some people when they when they’re starting, they never know how to approach this.
Lord Gris
Oh, yeah, I had no idea how to approach it. Everything it’s all been very hands on. I think I would encourage people that if there’s something they want to do, just get started, you’re not going to know how to do everything when you start and you will learn so much along the way. And you probably you know, if you’re sitting around waiting to be like, good enough, or whatever, just start you figured out. Yeah,
Iva Mikles
for sure. And so when you mentioned also this book, would you like would recommend to read? Is there some other books you love or movies or documentaries, you would say like people should definitely see or read?
Lord Gris
How to Win Friends and Influence People is good, the Go Giver is good. Both those are good in terms of learning, like networking skills, and how to be good with people. In terms of just things I think people should watch. I think Quinoa is a really great movie that just came out and I like I’ve seen it like three times now. Which I don’t ever rewatch movies, but I love it so much. It gives me like chills every time I watch it. And like I feel super inspired. It’s just so beautiful, musics beautiful. The animation is beautiful. So I think people should watch I think they’ll feel inspired.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, I haven’t seen it yet. So I will put it in the show notes so people can check it out. For sure. And is there something you bought three cently or ever some product or service, you would recommend like, this is super cool.
Lord Gris
I’m definitely gonna say my Surface Pro is the best thing ever. I love everything about it. Because I’m just able to take a picture off of it. And then like upload that into my drawing program and draw with it. You know, because are the tablets, you can get that like plug into a computer, but they don’t do all the other stuff. And they’re not portable, I can drag this thing around with me anywhere. I want to go and draw wherever. So just I love my Surface Pro I think anyone would benefit from one.
Iva Mikles
Oh, cool. Cool. I have to check it out, at least in a shop. Someone because I never like yeah, tried it. So
Lord Gris
Oh, it’s wonderful. You love it and never go back.
Iva Mikles
So that’s actually good, Anna. So we discuss all the products and the motivations. And I would like to end this interview with some questions about the future. And if you would imagine yourself in like five to 10 years, and if you cannot fail or you’re not scared of anything, what would you be doing?
Lord Gris
Oh, man, I would definitely be painting. Yeah, absolutely. Like successful media. Five years in the future. We just have so many paintings under my belt. I have a successful YouTube channel where I document how I make them. And you know, I would be in gallery shows traveling around showing off my art. Yeah, that’s I mean, yeah, I love that I always meet artists that come to town, just because they’re doing a gallery show. And they talk about all the countries they’ve gotten to visit because they’re showing and all these different countries. And I’m like, oh, I want to see the world.
Iva Mikles
But then I’m sure that will happen. So you know, you just have to believe and it’s like, yeah, this is happening. What would you like to be remembered for in 100 years?
Lord Gris
Oh, man, definitely. For being able to be a positive impact on people and making people believe in themselves. And, and you know, helping just hundreds of artists become a successful artists. Ideally, I think that’s the most important thing to me.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, that I think is really nice. I totally agree. And it’s super important. And so I want to thank you for taking the time to inspire others and being here. And do you have like a last piece of guidance for other people? Hmm,
Lord Gris
I think I think my last piece of guidance, especially for people that are young, but really for anyone of any age, I think, I think if I knew that all the practice that I did when I was younger was going to pay off as much as it did. Now, I would have done it way more. I think the only thing holding me back was thinking that it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. And I think that people should practice as hard as they can now because it will pay off if there’s there’s it will absolutely always work 100% of the time there’s no reason to be hesitant. There’s no reason to be afraid. Just make art.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, for sure. So guys, don’t forget to make art and inspire each other. So thank you again so much for being here. And we’ll talk to you next time.
Lord Gris
Thank you so much. So nice to meet you.
Iva Mikles
Hope you guys enjoyed this interview. You can find all the resources mentioned in this episode at artsideoflife.com. Just type a guest name in the search bar. There is also a little freebie waiting for you. So go check it out. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on iTunes, hopefully five stars so I can read and inspire more people like you. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to Art Side of Life podcast because I post new interview every single workday. If you want to watch the interviews, head over to artsideoflife.com/youtube. Thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to inspire each other. And I will talk to you guys in the next episode. Bye.
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Hi, I am Iva (rhymes with “viva”). I am a full-time self-taught artist behind Art Side of Life® and a Top Teacher on Skillshare. I have 15 years of experience in the creative field as a concept designer, illustrator, art director, and now freelance artist, content creator, and art instructor. My goal is to help you get your creative groove on with Procreate and make awesome art through practical classes, tutorials, Procreate brushes, and guides on art tools, supplies and resources. About me »