We were lucky to catch up with Anna Puchalski recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Anna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I knew I wanted to follow an artistic path from a very young age. I am dyslexic and struggled to learn to read. One of the things that really helped were comics — all sorts, actually. My grandmother sent me the color funny papers from her sunday newspapers once a month and my mother took me to the library and helped me find collections of early comics like Krazy Kat and Popeye. My older relatives hopped on as well, bringing me Smurf and Tintin comics from Europe, not always in English, though… By the time I was in fourth grade (and reading quite well by that time) I was convinced that comics were all I wanted to do when grew up.

While I’ve only worked in comics intermittently as an adult, that same drive to work in artistic expression that started with comics fuels me now with whatever my current genre of expression is.

Anna, 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 started out working in the Ink and Paint departments of various animation studios in the 90s, in New York City. It was an odd time to start a career as the industry was in the midst of a huge flux. A few years after getting into animation, most of the work moved off away from the east coast and I had to find a new field.

For several years I was very involved with the Designer Vinyl movement of the early 2000s. It was really interesting and innovative, and there really weren’t a lot of women, which was discouraging. During that time I took an interest in toy design in general, sculpted and designed dolls and taught myself pattern drafting for plush.

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

I feel like art has been ver devalued in the United States. There are certainly countries that are better about it! And I don’t just mean that the domestic populace doesn’t purchase art directly from artists (though that is a shrinking market). Our general lack of emphasis on art education and design has left us with a culture that often doesn’t know, much less care, if things look good or not.

And I don’t think there’s a single “this is good, that is not” rule. But still, learning when things have artistic value is good for people, and good for artists. The more people want things that look good, have aesthetic value, have meaning, the better our culture will look. Even on the most base, commercial level.

So, what society can do is think more about art, learn what they like, seek out artists who do that work.

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

Actually, the biggest help to me growing as an artist is incredibly boring. But it’s worth talking about. Early on, observational drawing was stressed to me as important. But naturally, being a child and being “creative” it seemed like boring art that is mostly done by people who can’t make stuff up in their heads.

Don’t get me wrong, I learned it anyway, but I didn’t put it into my regular practice until much later in my life when I started to seriously try to improve my foundational skills. A month of regular sketchbook practice, a page a day of anatomical poses or still lifes, or a page of birds or wolves, and I had almost immediate results. While the improvements do not stay that dramatic, and I don’t aways manage a page a day (we’re adults, we have lives), I do try to keep at it on a regular basis.

That’s it, sometimes the boring old methods are the best resource.

Contact Info:

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

Image Credits
All images A.D. Puchalski