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

Hi Brandon, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

i discovered art while in the 2nd grade. like most kids I’ve always enjoyed drawing and hated coloring Lol. On this one faithful day while in the 2nd grade, I was observing a Kid named Jonathan Leak drawing pictures that at the time to me looked like stan lee and the whole marvel comics team drew themselves. Watching him draw those pictures inspired me to try my hand at drawing pictures too. lets just say the first pic was an epic fail. the first pic I ever attempted was of Wolverine from the comic book in which Magneto took his adamantium. my classmates laughed at the picture but Jonathan motivated me to keep going from that day on ” I kept going”. every chance I could get I was drawing, even when I was supposed to lol. As a kid with ADHD, I stayed in trouble for being off-task drawing. in middle school I continued to get better, during this time I had established an interest in becoming an artist for a living. I would often share my dream with others, which led to me becoming deterred because all I was ever told was that artists don’t make any money and pick a real job. that was heartbreaking and led me to give generic job answers like, a fireman, police officer, or scientist. None of them interested me in the slightest. I continued to draw and draw. my skills started blossoming with each picture I created. fast forward to high school, I could draw a little better and was ready to show off my skills. the best I saw fit to do that was to draw my pictures on my desk. I would often fill up the entire desk with pictures and doodles before I left the class for the day, as well as draw pictures on the walls. Nope, i never got caught, but i don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing though lol. While in high school i played football and excelled leading me to play football in college. i attended Hillside and North Carolina Central University with NFL aspirations just like my Idol Ernie Barnes. During college is when i lost touch with art and focused on Football and college things. i would often revisit art by drawing pics during long boring football meetings or whenever i had free time which was rare. No one knew i could draw in college except a chosen few, even then I wasn’t taking it seriously at all, I wish I would have taken it seriously and had more artistic confidence. still, in my mind all I could remember is the line “Artists do not make any money, so i need a real job”, this resulted in me not taking art seriously. i graduated college didn’t make it to the NFL but ended up with a “REAL” job in the school system. During these years i begin to draw again but only as an outlet for boredom and stress. my coworkers began to take notice because i ended up drawing every time i wasn’t doing anything pertaining to work. i began to take art a little more seriously now because i see my skills and how much i improved even though i was consistently drawing. oh yeah and still hated coloring ( this is important to know lol). fast forward some years to when i had a pair of sneakers i did not want to get rid of because I’m a serious Sneaker Enthusiast ( that means my sneaker passion is deeper than a sneakerhead). i then began to research refurbishing sneakers. this is where my life started to change and roll in the direction of an artist. i began to make money from repainting and customizing shoes until i lost the love for that, and began attempting to paint canvases. along the way, i also learned how to color correctly. i ended up falling in love with coloring. i also learned how to spray paint which led to me painting murals and other large-scale pictures.

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 Brandon Hampton, Known as Littleton Ugliford III within the art world. I’m from a mythical, magical faraway kingdom full of adventures, controversy, and the evil Giant hobbit’s golden treasure. This magical enchanted land we speak of is Durham, North Carolina. I attended Hillside High School and NCCU, where I played football at both schools. I love the path I’ve taken because I feel like it follows in the footsteps of one of my favorite artists and hometown celebrities Ernie Barnes. Art has always been part of my life. My grandmother on my mom’s side is very artistic, as is my dad. As stated before I was drawn to art by one of my 2nd-grade classmates. I’m a big anime, cartoon, and comic book fan, so my work is often influenced by those sources. I specialize in murals and canvas paintings. I also like to paint clothes, shoes, and handbags…I paint anything that can be painted, except cars (I’m in the process of learning that). I’m very passionate about my art, therefore I take a very serious approach to each project. I feel what sets me apart from others is that I’m always learning, evolving, and trying new things, I’m also a middle school art teacher, so I love sharing my knowledge with the youth and watching their skills grow. I also love to take realistic things and turn them into cartoons and vice versa. I feel like that is one of my strong skill sets amongst other skills. I love painting murals especially when I get to use spray paint. I’m also a firm believer that my art speaks for me, so the world will never see my face but they will see my art. This is why I came up with the Persona of Littleton Ugliford III. He is my character with a bag for a head that I created to represent me. I feel like the art world is becoming saturated. A lot of folks are using sex/their body to sell their artwork or get their work noticed, I refuse to do that in any sense because I don’t do art to get super rich ( even though I wouldn’t mind it happening), I create art to share my talents with the world and make my mom and little 6 year old me (who wanted to be a pro artist) proud. My art is my face

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

To me, I feel the most rewarding aspect of being creative is the fact that I’m living out my childhood dream. This is something I did not think was possible due to negative outside influences that gave me the idea that being an artist is not a real job. Also, the fact that I’m able to even create the things I create still amazes me. I honestly don’t and can’t believe that my hands can produce the thing that they do. Another rewarding aspect is that I get to share my skills, talents, and knowledge with the world and the number of people I reach seems to increase often, which amazes me still to this day. I’m happy that people admire and enjoy my artwork. Also being able to teach and give back the knowledge I received in the same manner gives me that sense of fulfillment that seems to complete me. I didn’t take the traditional art route when it comes to learning what I know. A lot of the things I now learned on my own or were taught by an artist who believed in me and my skills. Artists/ mentors like Artie Barksdale and Bo Meadows have taught me a lot of things throughout my journey. I still confide in them for advice, tips, and tricks to help improve my artwork. I’ve also met a lot of cool people who became friends/family throughout my journey. Overall just being able to create art and flex my creative muscles for a living is the most rewarding of all

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Some of the misconceptions I’ve ran/run into are people misunderstanding the time it takes to produce good quality artwork. Good art takes time to produce, anything that can be done fast is not good work in my opinion. When I work I take my time because I’m learning as go, which always leads to some of my best work. Another misconception is that we make a lot of money. I’m literally in a financial bind as we speak lol resulting in my working as a teacher ( you already know how much teachers get paid lol) while working other small jobs, along with trying to create art. I have to do these things to support my kids and pay bills. In a perfect world, I would be doing art full-time while being able to sustain the income it brings. My passion for art and to succeed, while sharing my talent with the world is what keeps me going. I feel as if my time to shine is literally around the corner, I just have to turn that corner. With that being said another misconception is that success comes overnight. It is widely known that artists don’t become famous until they are dead and gone, and for the famous ones who are alive, it has been a very long road to get there. I feel like it has taken me 10 or more years to just be known as an artist within my city, that doesn’t mean that I’m a well-known artist in my city just yet, I’m just recognized as one, which was a goal of mine. Also, art is very time-consuming and many will not understand that while you are in the “zone’ when creating time will pass faster than a Lambo in a high-speed chase on the highway…or maybe that is just the time blindness part of my ADHD lol. Either way, I can become consumed so much with my artwork that time ceases to exist. This has cause a lot of turmoil within relationships due to them thinking I’m only concerned with art or I only have tunnel vision

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @uglass_milk_artist
• Facebook: brandon hampton