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

Beetle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Committing to making comics full time has given me more awareness of my individuality as an artist then a lifetime of drawing as a hobby. It took me so many years to stop trying to emulate what other artists were doing, and start leaning into my own thing. I realize now that “visual arts” as a career is an infinitely vast field. Despite what a lot of people will tell you, I believe there is a path for every type of artist to make a living off their craft with enough dedication and sense of self.

Beetle, 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’m a comic artist. My readers know me primarily for my one-page webcomics which I post a few times a week. I’ve also written a fifty-page piece and am in the process of writing my next long-form story! About a year and a half ago I left my full-time retail job with a little money saved up. I was studying to receive an IT certification, desperate to get on some kind of career path. While I was studying, I spent all of my free time drawing comics, finally having enough time and energy to spend on my lifelong passion of drawing and making art. I began posting my comics in April 2022. When the time came to take a practice examination for my IT certification, I flunked it. Meanwhile I had gained a substantial following on social media and had even begun to profit of merchandise from my comics. It was a wake-up call to finally commit to art full time. It’s the thing that motivates me most, and it took me all this time to learn that when you love what you do, work doesn’t feel like work at all. It feels like what you’re meant to do!
I think I have a lighthearted and blunt way when speaking about art. I started teaching some drawing classes on Twitch and YouTube. Even though I’m not the most technically proficient artist, I try to teach beginner artists the most important aspects of creating: honesty, confidence, and actualization. I think a lot of career artists are easily wounded, jaded, feel burned by an industry. There’s not nearly enough motivating words in the art world so I try to spread that message.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I think they’re stupid. I was actually open-minded about the idea even in the beginning when it seemed hot to hate them. For a brief moment, it seemed like an interesting way for independent artists to get paid for their work. But like everything in our age of corpo-tech-finance-bro culture, it was immediately adapted by the worst people on the internet as a soulless get-rich-quick scheme. I’m all for artists getting paid, and occasionally I see independent artists selling their work as NFTs. I think that’s cool if it works for them, and sometimes the art itself is inspired. But as a whole I find the culture around them to be brainless and corporate, so I never got into it.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I make webcomics, which as a medium have the benefit of being shareable since they are built for social media. Comics are an interesting artistic medium because it feels like they are often overlooked by creators of fine art, and also not respected as an art form by casual consumers. People who love comics know that neither of these mentalities are true, and that the world of comics is endlessly rich and saturated with incredible writers and artists. Webcomics fall into an even less respected niche, and there is some blame to go around. There’s a lot of same-y looking styles thanks to trends in oversimplification over the last decade. Webcomics are still a very new medium, and they differ slightly from printed comics in a few ways. Webcomic creators are still feeling out the ground floor to see exactly where webcomics can go. I think in some ways this freed me as a webcomic artist, since I had a few viral hits early on that broke the typical conventions of the contemporary “scene”. A lot of casual viewers still look at my social media accounts as a “meme page” and don’t consider that I’m one guy actually drawing these things. But that doesn’t discourage me at all. In fact, I think there are some amazing fine artists who would grow both on socials, and in their own creative journey by trying their hands at comics.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Instagram.com/beetlemoses
• Twitter: Twitter.com/beetlemoses
• Youtube: YouTube.com/@beetlemoses
• Other: Patreon.com/coldcuts