Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Collin Reynolds. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Collin, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Sometimes you have to make the jump and bet on yourself when going after what you want.
I had some money saved away when i made the choice to start doing art creation full time, but I had a belief in my own abilities in order to make that jump.

I was working a normal 9-5 over worked and stressed, my Crohns disease was starting to flare up more than usual and I just wasn’t happy with where I was going.

In May I got into a bad car accident on the way to work that totaled my car and forced me to be out for about 2 weeks or so with a concussion and it was that period of time that I started doing more art to keep myself busy. I ended up losing a bet to a long time friend and streamer of Destiny content at the time and part of the agreement was to start painting more consistently on Twitch, but as a man of my word I kept up my end of the bargain.

As it would turn out he ended up raiding and hosting me almost every time I’d go live, bring his community to check out my work and things just started to snowball from there.
Twitch was in the early stages of starting an art section and Bob Ross’ copy right was about to be up for public domain across all platforms so it was just the perfect storm of right place right time.

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

I’m a freelance artists that focuses on more realistic nerd culture & wrestling related work.
I’ve had an interest in art all my life, but I didn’t start fully diving into it as a profession until 2015 as mentioned previously after losing a bet. I stream my entire process live on twitch, then edit down the content into a timelapse content to share on various other platforms (twitter, instagram, youtube, tiktok, etc).

I do mainly traditional oil paintings but have recently started diving more into the digital side of things in the last 2 years.

I’ve had the pleasure of being featured on the front page of Twitch.tv for black history month and the art section just to name a few.

Some of my clients include current AEW & WWE professional wrestlers

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

Just the idea of twitch and youtube in general
Honestly just using the internet as a tool to become as great as an artist as you want to be.
When I was younger the idea of being able to find someone you admire creatively and watch their process, pick their brain, or ask questions seemed unheard but now we have access to so many resources online.

Jim Lee for example streams his process on twitch every so often on weekends
Being able to watch the man who helped create an icon style of batman and just overall art in comics produce his work from start to finish and ask him questions live to pick his brain is one of the most value resources imaginable.

Even without having a particular artists you like, but perhaps just a style, there’s so many tutorial and step by step vids on youtube these days to carve out your own path.

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

The biggest lesson I learned is that It’s okay to accept help
For some long I’ve done pretty much everything as an artist on my own, but as I’ve gotten older it makes it a little more difficult to keep up with everything and sometimes it becomes overwhelming and it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind or spinning your wheels.

I finally took the chance to ask someone I trusted for help with the business and it’s helped relieve a lot of stress and headaches because sometimes things we don’t want to deal with get in the way of the things we want to deal with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://properlymad.bigcartel.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/properartist
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/properartist
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/properartist
• Other: twitch.tv/properartist

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