We recently connected with Rachel Brady and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rachel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
When I was really young (like 4 years old) I was really into the anime show “Dragon Ball Z” so I use to take images of the characters from the show and try copying them. It was during that time that I learned I had a knack for drawing. I can definitely say that I was stubborn when it came to art teachers trying to teach the fundamentals of drawing to me, when they would try to have me do simple drawing exercises or do something like draw a bowl of fruit I would rebel against that and draw more characters that I liked instead lol! I know if I actually took their lessons more seriously and took the time to really learn the fundamentals I probably would be much further along in my art. So learning the fundamentals is definitely an essential thing to learn when you want to do art, especially when you want to make your own characters and scenes. Another thing that pushed me back from learning more essential techniques for my art is that in high school a lot of my peers kinda pushed me to try learning how to draw realism and draw our favorite actors and singers. Because of that I spent even longer doing drawings where I was copying from photos and even though that is a fun skill to have it kept me from learning the fundamentals for even longer. I actually didn’t really start learning the real stuff I needed to until halfway through college lol! Now I’m focusing more on how anatomy works and how to place characters into a space to be able to make my own scenarios and compositions and it’s definitely much more satisfying and fun to do. Not that drawing portraits wasn’t good, cause I had some fun things come from doing that, just that I feel more satisfaction with being able to draw my own thing without the limitations of drawing from a photo. I can still draw a realistic portrait though if I really needed to lol!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
So like I said before I got into drawing by being inspired by my favorite anime at the time, “Dragon Ball Z”. I loved the idea of being able to draw my favorite characters whenever I wanted to so that’s how I first got interested in drawing. Because of this I now know how to draw any character you want and would be able to depict them in any scenarios you can think of. So if you had an original character you would like to see come to life I can definitely make that happen for you. I also like to try drawing in different styles once in awhile so if you had a style you would prefer I can probably pull it off for you.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I would love to do artwork for comics mostly. Whether that is doing the interior pages, cover art, American comics or even art for Mangas. I love drawing characters that have a story to them and being able to do that and make a living out of that would be amazing. To help me reach this goal I made a few friends that currently work in the comic industry who have been extremely helpful in helping me build my portfolio to better my chances to reach my goal. For that I am very thankful to them.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding thing about being an artist is when I create something and that wows a person or inspires them. I also love when I’m able to help or connect with others through my art.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rachelmbradyart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelmbradyart/
- Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/RachelMBrady
Image Credits
Rachel Brady