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

Ben, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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.

My earliest hurdle achieving professional proficiency in a creative field was making the difficult decision between music and visual art. Once I committed fully to the path of illustration, my momentum started to build and it became easier to see results from drawing every day. I filled dozens of sketchbooks. I drew for thousands of hours during college, and even after I graduated. Drawing from life gave me a solid grasp of the fundamentals and also provided me with confidence when it came to applying my skills doing commissioned work for clients.

Ben, 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?

I am an Artist offering creative services in Illustration, Animation and Art Direction. My work is inspired by nature. More specifically, I draw inspiration from the scenery and physical demands I’ve experienced during extensive excursions through my native Idaho’s backcountry forests. It was a long and winding path to synthesize a consistent creative vision that translates as a marketable product, but today I am proud to list Patagonia, Netflix, Reddit, The NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NBC News among many clients. If you’re looking for high-end visual work, chances are I can find a way to direct or create work that will fit well with your project. That’s a skillset that I never imagined I’d be able to possess. I’m still learning though. I learn constantly on every project, there’s some new challenge to overcome, and some new skill to learn.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

It’s actually the role of artists and creatives to support society in a way that naturally produces a thriving creative ecosystem. It’s on us to output meaningful, valuable work that invites participation organically. In return, society should invest in art, because aesthetic value = economic value. People relate to and want to participate in visually/audibly pleasing experiences, and that translates directly to commercial value.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I’d discovered Agency Access a while back. It’s a reliable, trustworthy subscription service that sources the contact information of thousands of creative professionals at ALL major companies, publications, and agencies you may wish to work with, and it’s well worth the cost.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://benkonkol.com
• Instagram: @b_konkol
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benkonkol/

Image Credits

Headshot by John Webster