Ep.30: Being a mom and full time artist with Simone Grünewald (Schmoedraws)

I am an Artist, but Professional

Simone Grünewald, also known as Schmoesi is a combined digital and traditional artist from Germany. She loves to tell stories with her sketches in fantasy settings or inspired by her life.

Simone recently published her tutorial on designing a character based on a real person in the magazine Character Design Quarterly. It is 6 double pages long! Character Design Quarterly (CDQ) is an exciting new print magazine for illustrators, artists, animators and character art enthusiasts.

Art Side of Life Newsletter

Get in touch with Simone

Tumblr: https://schmoedraws.tumblr.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schmoedraws
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpKqWIupudRt-5c8DMg0GdA

Key Takeaways

“Being an artist it’s hard. It’s all about hard work, sweat, and tears … It’s all about practice. All it takes is a spark of talent combined with hard work.”

“Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out.” Chuck Jones
Simone wasn’t good at anything else other than arts. She loved doing it and she didn’t care where in arts, she just loved doing it, study it and see what happens …
The best advice that stuck with Simone was not to dwell on details too much. It pushed her to focus on important things and not get lost in details. From that point she got looser and more expressive, focusing more on the composition and not perfect detail
It’s such a great force to have people around you who love art, it’s important to get professional and to stop drawing in checkered notebook 🙂
Simone either goes for a story or draws a character, especially ladies and she likes to combine different styles to get a bigger visual library

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.

School Simone attended: Hamburg Technical Art School
Animex – a forum in Germany for anime and manga fans. It has local chapters that meet regularly in person
Sketchbooks from Canson – really good paper for drawing
Daedalic – a gaming studio where Simone has worked for 10 years now on titles like Tales of Monkey Island or Pillars of the Earth
Books
- Color & Light – James Gurney
- Khang Le Skillful Huntsman – vis dev, environment, story
- Mateus Nestre: Framed Ink – a composition bible
- Drawn to Life – both volumes – she always reads bits and pieces to get inspired and learn
What simplifies her life is that she can order groceries online – Rewe in Germany