We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Arantza Valdivia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Arantza below.

Alright, Arantza 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?

Since I was a kid, I always knew that I would love to pursue a career/path related to art. However, once I got older, and the time came to decide on a career, illustration wasn’t my first choice. From the beginning, art and creativity have been a big part of my life. It shaped my childhood through drawings, crafts, and creating games. Despite this early awareness of my dream career, I initially chose a college major that wasn’t entirely related. I was so scared of not achieving enough and failing if I pursued fine arts and illustration.

While in this major, I took an illustration class where I first shared my creations with an audience different from my family or friends. I found out through that class, I could connect with people in a really special way. It filled me with so much joy making them instantly laugh with my silly characters and scenes. This moment made me realize I could achieve something so meaningful and complex with my illustrations that I wasn’t aware of before. I became passionate about the idea of connecting with people this way while simultaneously doing something I had loved my entire life. I knew I couldn’t let that go to waste.

So, with that, I made a big decision to follow my passion. I transferred to study Illustration abroad at The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). There, a few years later, I heard one of my professors, Casey Nelson, talk about this same incredible feeling of connecting with people through art. Hearing that, I just knew I was on the right path, surrounded by the right people, on the way to start fulfilling my purpose as an artist.

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?

I’m Arantza, a Peruvian freelance illustrator. I come from a resilient culture where, no matter how tough things get, we always find joy and hope in our millenary stories, art, and culture. So from a young age, I’ve appreciated the power of storytelling and visual communication to brighten people’s lives, share ideas, and unite them.

Today, I maintain these values as a mission to accomplish through my illustrations, specifically with my fun characters, scenes, and environments. Art remains my favorite way to bring joy and connect with people.

At present, I am actively involved in developing illustrations for children’s stories. I’ve worked on projects for clients such as ChapterOne, a global nonprofit providing 1:1 reading support to children. I illustrated “The Red Mango Tree” and “Herbert’s Cheese Chase,” both stories that form part of Chapter One’s Global Free Library, an online collection focused on celebrating the world’s diversity. I feel fortunate and happy to collaborate on such important and beneficial projects!

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had known earlier about the many art groups, clubs, and events created by organizations and how easy and beneficial it is to participate in them. Nowadays, it’s super easy to find them through social media like Instagram or Discord, helping you join communities of different art markets, like children’s books, video games, animation, and more. One of the communities I appreciate a lot is the Lightbox Expo Discord channel, where they always share very useful content for anyone interested in the art and animation industry.

Through these groups, plenty of resources become easily accessible, including live workshops and presentations with professionals in the industry. In my case, thanks to these opportunities, I stumbled upon an event where I could participate in creating a video game within a 48-hour timeframe in my country. It allowed me to delve deeper into an industry I’ve always been interested in and make new connections.

I firmly believe that the learning journey never stops, and it’s essential to actively seek out opportunities for continuous growth.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn is the notion of “being the best at what you do.” This lesson became unattainable as soon as I started attending art school, and I realized that I wasn’t the only person who could paint or draw well; there were thousands of others. Until today, unlearning this has been challenging because it’s very natural to aim for perfection, especially considering how much people push us into that idea. However, something I learned later is that focusing only on perfection can also weaken your work and demotivate you because not everyone will love what you do, nor will everything always turn out as expected.

In those moments, I always try to remember my goal, my purpose, and trust in my abilities because I believe these elements together are what differentiate one artist from another. As artists, we all have very good skills, but at the same time, we also possess a unique artistic voice and mission.

This uniqueness is what makes each artist stand out in their own way. By contributing our distinctive perspectives to the world, we’re already doing a great job at what we do. Being an artist or creative means staying on a constant learning journey, adding to what we already know. Thinking about who’s the “best” doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://arantzavaldivia.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/araval.art
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arantzavaldivia/

Image Credits
Arantza Valdivia © 2024