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

Alright, Brian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Being a full-time artist is something that I’ve wanted to be since middle school. Since actually becoming one ten years ago, I still have to stop and pinch myself over it. It’s certainly come with a lot of baggage on the business/financial side of the job and being self employed, it’s hard for me to take time for myself sometimes but at the end of the day, I am incredibly grateful that I can make a living from making art.

Prior to becoming an artist, I worked in grocery stores and hotels for about 15 years and though I had some good experiences at them, along with some bad, I do not miss them.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Shortly after graduating from an illustration program at an art college, I started selling prints of my work at local comic conventions in Toronto. My wife, also an artist, soon joined me and she realized that if we could start doing more conventions in other cities, we would be able to work for ourselves and save more money than we did working for a company. So we both quit our respective jobs and never looked back.

From that, I started to build a customer base who would help spread my work on social media which resulted in sporadic commission work and licensing deals.

But I didn’t start feeling like a legitimate artist until I started down a path of trying to connect to my Vietnamese roots. There was so much that I was learning about Vietnam and my relationship to its culture that it all came out in my work. Since focusing on that, I’ve been able to reach an audience across North America and all the way to Vietnam itself. This is by far the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

For the most part, I’ve been lucky in that the vast majority of people I meet understand the work that goes into doing art for a living. I am very well aware of how comfortable my job is compared to many other jobs that are far more difficult such as a nurse or a factory worker or a truck driver. They do more important work than I do. But being an artist is still how I make my living and most people know this and are willing to pay for my work.

Having said that, I have run into a few people who view what I do as nothing more than a hobby and ask if I can do an illustration for them at no charge or for a ridiculously low fee. It’s widely understood that you have to pay to go see a movie or own an album or eat at a restaurant but for a few people, this doesn’t apply to visual arts.

For myself, I’ve learned to value the time and effort it takes for me to work on an illustration and the very few times that someone doesn’t see that value, I politely turn them down.

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

One thing I had to unlearn was thinking that I knew how to make the best version of my art. When I am 60 or 70 hours into working on the same illustration, I feel like I’ve done my very best on it and I can’t see what’s working and what’s not working. This is when a second opinion from another artist can really help make the piece better because they have a fresh take on it and can see things I didn’t think of.

There were times in the past when I would ask my wife for her opinion on something I was working on and because it didn’t align with my opinion, I would dismiss it. I realized that I wasn’t looking for help but just someone to tell me my work was good. I had to learn to let go of my ego and really see that many of her suggestions would make my final art better, even if they are just in subtle ways. Now when I disagree with a suggestion of hers, I have a reason why instead of just outright disagreeing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.brianhoangart.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/brihoangdraws
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/brihoangdraws