We were lucky to catch up with Jeffery Burns recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jeffery, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

So I’d been drawing ever since I was 5 years old but I never looked at pursuing a career as a creative until I was 19 and had to face the fact that being the next Rap Star was not going to happen. I didn’t have anyone to show me the steps to becoming a successful artist. I just kinda found my way into a Commercial Arts course at East Los Angeles Occupational Center. It was cheaper and shorter than going the traditional art school route. Back then the best way to get your art career started was to find an entry level production art gig and climb the ladder.
Things started to click for me the day our Instructor had a past student come in and talk to us about the opportunities that were out in the real world. And the icing on the cake was seeing him drive off in a ’92 Nissan 300ZX.
It’s funny how we associate success with having nice things. lol
It wasn’t until years later after burnout had set-in that I realized that it was never about the money. I was always a creative soul.
I love the quote by Anni Albers that says, “Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of the materials.”

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

I wear many different hats and enjoy different disciplines, but I like to refer to myself as a Visual Storyteller.

The first 25 years of my life was spent as a graphic designer. I bounced around in different industries from an ad agency to a watch retailer, to the non profit sector and then into the medical field. I thought I wanted to settle down somewhere but it turns out that I like the diversity.

These days I spend most of my time helping self publishing authors turn the stories in their heads into physical and digital books to share with the world. I find it to be the best of all worlds. I enjoy the structure of page layout and can still stretch my imagination when drawing the illustrations as well. I even went so far as to write a book of my own to understand what the writer is feeling.

But even still, apart from this I enjoy creating more fine art pieces the traditional way, with acrylic paint and markers on canvas and other surfaces.

I know it sounds like a lot but at the end of the day I like to sum it up this way – I help individuals as well as small and medium sized companies in entertainment, games and anywhere VISUAL storytelling is needed, take their message from concept to fully rendered reality.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

After 20 years of working for various companies I stopped enjoying the work that I was doing. My last “job” was working for a medical device manufacture as one of two designers working on instruction manuals, product catalogs and brochures. Our target audience was hospital staff, soooo yeah. This job didn’t offer the most glamorous of projects, which did contribute to my boredom.

But outside of that I had stopped dreaming and fell into the rut of just collecting a paycheck.
Still I didn’t make a move until my boss left the company and was replaced with someone I just did not gel with. And if you ask anyone that knows me they’ll tell you, Jeff gets along with everyone!
So within 3 months of working under my new boss I resigned.

This was probably one of the best things for my art journey.
I thought I was walking away from art for good. It took a drastic step like that for me to realize how much of a creative person I am. I couldn’t just walk away. My love for being creative wouldn’t let me!
I learned that in the pursuit of finding a job with good pay to settle into, I lost sight of the game-plan to use graphic design as a stepping stone to becoming an illustrator.

I wasn’t designing logos in my spare time. I was drawing pictures of Spiderman. As a boy my passion was creating comic book superheroes, but I didn’t think it was possible for a kid from the inner city to earn a living drawing cartoons. I’ve come to realize I’m an illustrator trapped in a graphic designers body. Graphic design is my foundation and it will always be there but my heart belongs to drawing scenes that tell a story. And now that I’m learning to combine all my talents, I’m experiencing more joy than I ever have.

Don’t let a title define who you truly are.

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

I wish I would have accepted and adopted technology sooner than I did. I was an early adopter of the Macintosh SE and was using programs like Macdraw long before Photoshop was a thing. Yet, I didn’t take art creation on the computer very seriously for quite some time.
And I didn’t want anything to do with the internet and web design even though opportunities to get paid to learn the skills where being thrown at me.
Today I tell art students not to take the tools and resources the internet provides for granted.
It can be easy to become overwhelmed by all the opportunities available and only see white noise.
One may look at a phone and see a device on which to consume content like TikTok videos. But I see a super-computer at your fingertips that can allow you to network with the world, create near cinema quality videos, close multi million dollar deals and get a top level education from.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://jeffburnsart.com/index.html
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeffburnsart/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffburnsart/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffburnsart
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJhX8jkr7h7SfQRkXMBQWkQ
• Other: https://www.artstation.com/jeffburnsart

Image Credits
Emerge Evolution Entertainment Group, for photo of me painting