Miss Holly is a Freelance Illustrator that creates beautiful fantasy artwork.
I work from home, so I set up my desk where there was space in the living room. Because of my annexing most of the space we don’t have room for a table to eat, so we eat like bums on the couch!
For the sake of honesty, I didn’t clean the desk nor put away my mess!
This desk is really special to me, as it was a gift from my grandmother. It’s my dream desk, setup in a U shape which allows me to have everything within arm’s reach!
The screen in front of the chair is my daily working computer, which is pretty massive. When drawing, I sketch and ink on my companion cintiq that you can see on the left, then I transfer the file to my computer and I edit/color it.
Next to the keyboard you can see a little notebook, that would be my bullet journal. I need it like my dog needs belly rubs. I write down everything in it : long term projects, short term ones, daily tasks, reminders, etc. It’s like a giant to do list. I also write down birthdays, gift ideas, appointments… If I lose it my life goes in shambles D:
On the right of the desk you can see a second computer.
A few years ago that was my main computer, but it broke down right in the middle of a deadline. I couldn’t afford to wait for it to be repaired, so I bought the new one right away. After my work was done I did get it repaired, and I use it as a backup now. A few months ago my new computer broke as well, so while it was being repaired I used the old one for emails, accounting, etc. Pretty handy.
In front of the old computer there’s my small traditional media space. Whenever I use watercolor, ink, copics, I do it there. If I need visual references I have two screens right around me! This area is also right in front of the window with the best view, so I can work with natural light all day long without having to move because of shadows.
Who were your biggest influences growing up?
I think this one won’t come as a surprise. Growing up my biggest influence was Disney’s animated features. Mostly, I was fascinated by the movies from the 90s, the art of Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, Mark Henn, and James Baxter. Later on I grew smitten with the art of Chris Sanders, Jin Kim, Claire Keane, Lorelay Bové, Lisa Keene, Paul Briggs, Victoria Ying, Paul Felix, Bill Schwab, Scott Watanabe… There are so many!
All together they symbolize everything I love. The flow in their sketches, their use of line, movement, the amazing environments they create, everything they manage to convey through their pictures. I’m in love with it all.
I had many other influences of course, and those include a lot of manga and anime.
Rumiko Takahashi (with Ranma) and Kôsuke Fujishima (Ah ! My Goddess) were the key ingredients at the time I began drawing seriously. Through them I discovered the wonderful world of manga, and I read as many as I could. Tsukasa Hojo was a massive discovery as well.
Then I was introduced to anime by a friend, and I kind of fell through the rabbit hole! There’s just too many to mention. But it definitely opened my very narrow view about art and styles, made me see so many possibilities, I just felt like trying everything, I was torn apart in all the directions I wanted to go, but it didn’t matter!
Animation in general has always been a huge inspiration for me, so it would be silly not to mention the work of Miyazaki as well.
Those are the two big groups I can define, and I know you’ll see them in the inspirations list of many artists from my generation
There are also many other influences I could cite: everything art nouveau (Mucha of course), a lot of art deco, though that is more recent, rococo paintings (Fragonard, Boucher), pin-up art (both old style posters and more recent artists like Shane Glines), Victorian fashion, many modern comic artists (so much love for Barbucci and Canepa, but also French artists like Boulet who have a very unique storytelling talent, or monuments like Adam Hughes) and all the artists I have been following online year after year!
Give us an insight about your career that few people know, or talk about, but that you consider to be really important.
Being an illustrator is actually much more difficult than I could have ever imagined.
I get really surprised when people following my work come to me asking for career advice, or tips to become a "full fledged, professional, successful illustrator" like me.
Like, what ? No, no no, you got it all wrong!
My "career" is a succession of struggles, small victories but huge disappointments.
When I decided to start freelancing, I had no background to speak of. No friends that were illustrators, no former teachers or art school mates, since I had no education in the field, no contacts, nothing.
This meant I had to start from the very bottom, trying to get in contact with people that mattered, art directors, publishers, etc. It was, honestly, a daunting task.
I sent my portfolio, maybe, a million times. I made phone calls. I went to cons, fairs, with my drawings in my arms. I sent thousands of emails. I made appointments. I was turned down just as many times.
It’s actually (for me at least) extremely difficult to find work. The competition is high, everyone is very talented.
I can’t even begin to describe you the way you feel when you get turned down, especially after so many times. You start to think you’ll never make it, that your dream will remain precisely just that - a dream. That you’re not good enough, that you’ll never be. That you’re just pursuing a chimera, wasting everyone’s time.
There was a period when self-doubt literally crippled me. Nothing I did had any value in my eyes anymore. And to those feelings you have to add the problem of money. No gig = no money = insane poverty. It’s just as simple as that. Passion can only lead you so far, at some point you have to eat and feed your pup.
Because I’m a real hardhead, I just kept trying and trying. I had part time jobs on the side, making ends meet with commissions from Deviant Art...
Then I landed my first gig, which was a book about horses for little girls. The publisher had been let down last minute by their illustrator and needed a replacement asap. I had only 2 weeks to draw 40 full color A4 pages! But that got me started.
Little by little I started to get more and more gigs, and at first I was really happy about it. I worked on many, many books... coloring books, stickers books, school books (those are among my favorites), summer exercise books, learning tools, children magazines… I thought, finally! My head is out of the water, I have jobs!
But all these jobs actually showed me another aspect of the field : illustrating is NOT well paid.
I was working 70h a week and didn’t make minimum wage at the end of the month. Because I had been so desperate for so long to find jobs, I accepted everything that came my way, at any pay.
I was offered jobs for a pay as low as $2 per hour.
Publishers know they have the upper hand, and they play it well.
I had a burn-out, after which I decided to stop this mess. The plan was: accept less jobs, and negotiate prices, so that I can work a more decent amount of hours for a decent income, like any job.
The result? I stopped working.
When I started to negotiate prices all the publishers answered the same thing: if you don’t do it for the pay we offer, we’ll just ask someone else. And that’s exactly what they did.
I still work with a couple of publishers that I like very much and made the effort to meet me on equal grounds, but mostly I now illustrate mainly for private clients.
Thanks to so many years of posting my work online and on social medias, my work got shared here and there and that brought me new perspectives. I illustrate for invites, little private events, portraits, blogs, etc. And I like it that way!
So why am I telling you all this?
Back when I started, I would have wanted someone to tell me just that there are a few illustrators that make it right away, they have talent, are successful, never have to look for jobs. Chances are, you won’t be one of them.
You’ll fail, but that’s part of the game. When you do, just try again.
Embrace every victory, but learn to learn from every turn down email you get as well. Strive to get better, strive to grow, and don’t let bad times discourage you! It may get a bit of time, or it may get a freaking huge amount of time, who knows? Just keep swimming.
And also, know your value. Don’t work for free, don’t work for cheap, and don’t work for exposure, that is never worth it! You won’t benefit from it!
Someone who cannot afford to pay you is telling you two things: they don’t respect your work and think it has no value, and they are not in a position where they can bring you anything, let alone exposure.
Worse, working with these people will only bring you more bad clients. If you accept a low paid job from a client once, that’s all you’ll ever get from them. If they could have you for cheap once, they’ll never be willing to pay you your real value!
In short, be a pro and respect yourself. You master a craft, and you spend hours on your jobs. Those two things have value. Determine it, and never accept any less. It may be hard at first, but that’s a service you’ll be doing yourself in the long run.
Was there ever something else you considered doing as a career?
Oh definitely!! I have always loved drawing, but growing up I didn’t think this could be a career at all. Or that I had the talent, nor the guts to pursue it.
So my first career choices were completely different!
For the longest time I thought I’d be a vet. I have always loved animals and I really wanted to take care of them. But that’s when I was a child and "taking care of them" more or less in my mind meant, pet them, brush them, and give them medicine.
Little by little it didn’t seem like the right job for me, I just didn’t feel up to the task. I briefly considered doing another kind of animal related job but there was just nothing I could find that I much liked.
That period was more or less the time I went to middle school and started learning English and German at the time, and English became a new passion. I loved the language and the culture! It helped that I was good at it.
Since there was really nothing else that I liked at school, I thought, this must be it, this is my calling, so I started to pick my school subjects accordingly.
As a student there really was no passion within me at all. I was a top student because that was what was requested of me, but going to school bored me to no end, and I plain hated it. By the time I was in high school I just didn’t know what to do with my life anymore!
Some teachers, seeing my good grades, advised me in different directions. So I studied fields that had nothing to do with one another. Economics, history of the commonwealth, science. And in the end I graduated high school in the science section, majoring in math.
So you can imagine career picking became a real problem…
Because I simply HAD to pick a school after graduating, I went to Paris to an extremely selective and unforgiving school to learn about what we call "lettres" which includes literature, history, geography, languages (English, German and Latin).
It was the most miserable period of my short student life. It was so intense I spent a year without drawing at all, which in turn made me realize how much I missed it.
I left the school after a year and went to uni to focus on English, but this time I knew it wouldn’t be my career.
I started drawing again, started posting my art online for the first time, began taking my first commissions, joined a fanzine team, went to cons… THAT was my calling!
I finished uni just to get a diploma to reassure my parents. They were never against me pursuing a career in the art field, but like most parents they were scared I wouldn’t make a living with it, so having at least a diploma made them feel better about it.
After that I spent a few years just drawing to get better, while working on the side. I couldn’t afford any of the art schools that were available to me, and frankly, I was DONE with being a student.
I went to museums, I took evening life drawing classes at the Beaux Arts. I tried my hands at several medias. I took part in fanzines for a couple more years. After that, I made the big plunge and began being a full time freelance illustrator
If you could live anywhere you like, where would that be and why?
Aaaah that is a question that is gonna make me daydream all day. I fell in love with Scotland, and I wish I could live there.
I went there three times. Twice to tour the Highlands and a few of the isles (mainly Skye and the Shetlands), and once mainly to visit Edinburgh.
You know how sometimes, you visit a place, and you just feel like you belong? That’s what I felt when I visited Scotland.
I don’t know what it was, really. Was it the landscape, that stretches wildly to the horizon? Was it the air, fresh and moist, full of the scent of peat? Or maybe the extraordinary welcome that we were offered anywhere we set foot? Could it have been the food, the little pubs and all their daily specials to die for?
I could picture myself in a little cottage, in the highlands, waking up to extraordinary views and amazing skies. There would never be a shortage of inspiration there!
I could also totally see myself in a cozy apartment in Edinburgh - I just loved that city, and that’s saying something because I usually hate those haha.
The buildings, the streets, the atmosphere, all the little pubs (to think I don’t drink!) and all the walks you can do there!
Calton Hill, Arthur’s Seat, the Royal Mile, I loved them all. The cherry on the cake? The corgi section in the shop at Holyrood Palace. The haul I made!
You can find prints and so much more of Miss Holly's work on Society6.
On DeviantArt she is known as Holly Bell, and if you visit her profile you'll be able to see some of the commissioned work she's done.
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