We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cindy Charpilloz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cindy 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.

I started drawing at a very young age and to be honest I feel like I’ve been drawing since I know how to use a pencil. I started by copying from cartoon characters I used to like and creating scenes where they all interact together. During my childhood, I mostly drew animal characters such as the ones in the Lion King or horses as they were my favorite animal to draw. At the age of 12, I started to be interested in realism and this is how I drew my first realistic portrait with graphite pencils. For about 8 years, I felt very passionate about drawing realistic portraits with traditional mediums such as graphite and colored pencils mostly. As the references I used, I kept drawing celebrities and characters from movies & video games I appreciated at the time. Practicing my art over the years has brought me happiness and seeing all the improvement I’ve made since then is very fulfilling to me and I’m glad I managed to keep going and never give up.

After all these years of drawing realistic portraits, I had the feeling I was slowly losing interest in making these as I felt I wasn’t improving as much as I used to. I also felt the need to express my creativity way more. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to focus on a new art medium. This is how I bought my first graphic tablet in 2021 and started to draw digitally in a serious way. Since then, my passion for drawing has never been stronger and being able to create characters or scenes from my mind is my ultimate goal and I still have so much to learn to get better. But that’s what makes this art journey so stimulating and fulfilling to me.

Although I managed to improve my sense of detail when drawing portraits, I still feel I’m lacking some fundamentals and essential techniques that prevent me from drawing what I truly want to draw. During my art process, that can sometimes frustrate me even though I always manage to find a solution. That is why I try to get out of my comfort zone from time to time so that I make sure I keep improving my skills.
Also, as I already have a background at drawing realistically, it feels more difficult to break down all the things I’ve already learnt from copying. I think if I initially started to draw digitally, I would have improved faster the fundamentals such as the anatomy, the composition, the lighting and perspective in order to create a professional illustration faster.

I am still trying new ways of creating and improving my art and it goes by making new art styles such as the colored, manga (black and white) and sketchy ones.

By improving all these skills, I hope one day I will be able to create my own universe with a story and characters and share it to people who will be receptive to it. Telling a story through my art has always been something I deeply wish to do.

Cindy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

For now, I do not live from my art but this is something I aim for. It’s been “only” 3 years I have been drawing digitally and as I consider myself beginning from the start, it took me a while to feel satisfied with my art style and especially build my confidence as an artist. This is still something I am working on and this year I’m finally ready to go on my first cons (this summer) as an artist and I’m excited I finally took the step to exhibit my art.

In the future, I would like to fully live from my art but I believe becoming one requires years of practice and I still have so much to learn. My ultimate goal would be to create my own story and sell it as a freelance illustrator but in the meantime, I’d like to focus on cons, creating an online shop and selling some of my artworks. If the opportunity strikes, why not working as an illustrator for video games or webtoons/manga projects.
As I have a job on the side that has nothing to do with art, I am developing all of these personal projects during my free time and it’s sometimes very frustrating but well, we all have bills to pay, don’t we?!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of it is being able to inspire and touch people through my art. When people tell me I inspire them when they see my art, I am always very grateful they share it with me and I’m even more determined to keep going.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I don’t really have a particular goal in mind right now but I think I just want to be able to draw and express things that are meaningful to me and aligned with my values.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artjiayi/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/artjiayi
• Other: Tumblr: https://artjiayi.tumblr.com/

Image Credits
Cindy Charpilloz