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

Erihii, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

The very first client I got was off Craigslist. When I first started, I used to post service ads on the site for all the major cities, like New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. One of my first clients, a woman from Cleveland, reached out to me and wanted me to create illustrations for her children’s book. In fact, I created my first PayPal account just so she would have a way to pay me. Even though I didn’t know what my niche was at that time, it felt great to just get started and to generate some income from my art. Afterwards, my subsequent service ads would include the fact that I was now an illustrator for a published children’s book.

Erihii, 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 an illustrator. I create published illustrations for children’s books, comic strips, magazines, logos, flyers, and character design. I have worked with many local Nashville businesses and also national brands like, USA track, NASCAR, and US Gymnastics.

I am also a visual artist. I sell my personal work at various popup shops, comic conventions and festivals. You can usually catch me at the Nashville Farmer’s Market, my art includes popular and alternative comic book, cartoon, and anime characters as well as several of my own original characters. Every design or piece of work I create is hand-drawn. I always start my sketches on paper and then transfer them to my computer to finish the line work, add detail, and color. For this, I use Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop.

I create a lot of nostalgic art that makes people smile and reflect on their favorite shows, books, and movies. When customers purchase my work, a lot of them tell me how it brings back fond, childhood memories, and I love that. I just want people to feel good, so I keep most of my work pretty positive and upbeat.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Attending various festivals, popup shops, and comic cons has helped me gain a following and to connect with other artists.

Building a following has been really cool, and so has my time spent with fellow creators. Through my creative peers, I’ve learned lots of tips that have helped set me up for success in my field. They have guided me in the right direction and have helped me to evolve in my work and business practices. I have a lot of gratitude for people who have taken the time to give me advice.

When it comes to the followers of my work, they’re some real cool people, for sure. I love to see how excited people get when they have the opportunity to meet me in person. There’s just something about meeting them face to face. They get the experience of meeting an artist whose work they love, and I get the experience of meeting super dope people who like the same type of stuff that I do. I love nerding out with people about the different characters in my drawing. They’re the backbone of my business. All of their reposts and shares on social media gets the word out to people who may have never heard of me before. This helps me to grow my audience and connect with clients and customers all over, even in other countries!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The first comic con I displayed and sold my work at was was Wizards World in 2014. At the time, I had only ten types of prints that I was selling. My booth was set up right beside an artist who worked directly with Marvel, DC, and other popular comic companies. Most of the artists there had been in the business for years. Their booth spaces looked amazing and their artwork did too. I felt out of my depth there; my set up looked tacky and pieced together. On top of that, no one knew who I was and I didn’t know how to talk to people without being awkward, which made things worse. Long story short, I did terribly! I was so discouraged for most of that event.

However, I learned a lot while I was there. I observed other creators during that weekend and took notes. Although I was not as talented as the other artists there at that time, nor did I have a following like them, I noticed that my prints were much different than what the other artists were selling. My visual style stood in its own lane and was very niche, so I decided to focus my energy on leaning into that niche more to create my work and build my audience.

At the end of the day, you just have to create better art and never give up.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://erihiinyamor.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/super_saiyan_e/?hl=en