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

Eric, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Ten years ago I was hired to create some illustrations on a music video for the band Mini Mansions on Capitol Records. When the director hired me, he asked if I had animation experience, and of course I said “Yes!”, but the reality was that I had zero experience with animation. I completely lied and decided I was going to figure it out on my own. During the filming, the director was there every step of the way. He ended up helping me during the process. It ended up being a great experience and I am glad I took the risk. I’m not sure if I would have got the job if I didn’t tell a little white lie…

Eric, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an illustrator, musician, and educator who lives in the small town of Montgomery, Massachusetts with my wife, Meagan, and two daughters, Caroline and Emily. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be an artist and creator. As a child, my love for fantasy, monsters, MAD magazine, and Wacky Packages fueled my interest in drawing and creating something new daily.

Since 2000, I have been working as a freelance illustrator, and middle school art teacher. Mostly working for regional projects, some of my illustration work includes: beer can labels, album covers, skateboard graphics, t-shirt designs, and illustrations in a music video for the Capitol Records band, Mini Mansions.

My aesthetic comes from the punk rock and metal music I grew up listening to. The work I do has an old school, and loose feeling to it. My sense of humor also shows through in my work, whether it’s wacky puns, or straight up irony. If I’m not having fun while I’m making my art I don’t want anything to do it. Although sometimes I have to suck it up, because I have to pay the bills…

How did you build your audience on social media?

Starting a presence on social media, specifically Instagram was extremely frustrating in the beginning of my experience with it. Grinding away at it slowly everyday was what I was told to do, but it seemed like no one saw any of my posts for a long time. As time went on, I started to do contests, and challenges and people were starting to notice. Then reels became a thing and that was a huge boost for me, I was getting a lot of followers from that. I would post a reel once a week, every Saturday at 10AM. It started to take off, and it was also a lot of fun creating time lapse videos of my drawings. I will say that with the constant change of algorithms it is still very frustrating at times. It’s constantly changing, but never give up on it…

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

When I started off in 2000 there was no social media to help your career as a creative. That would have been a game changer back in the day. You could have a website, but no real way to get it out to the masses. So it was a lot of legwork, phone calls, and emails that no one ever responded to. So yeah the short answer is, I wish social media was around when I started. I also sometimes think it would have been helpful getting an agent. I never worked with an agent because I couldn’t wrap my brain around the thought of someone taking a percentage of my hard earned money…      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ericclarkeillustration.com
• Instagram: @ericclarkeillustration
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ericclarkeillutration

Image Credits
Kevin Mattia