We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenna Driscoll. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenna below.
Alright, Jenna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your business and how did you resolve those issues?
The most unexpected and biggest problem I’ve faced as an artist has been my back injury. In addition to drawing, I was also working two other manual labor jobs for several years. Over time, my back pain was increasing and I eventually found out my spine was abnormal and lacking the support it needed to do the heavy lifting I was doing every day. Severe back pain has prevented me from being able to sit or stand at my desk for very long making it extremely difficult to draw. During one flare up I was unable to draw anything for months. It’s been an ongoing challenge for years now trying everything to figure out how to help my back so that I can draw as much as possible. Im thankful I am still able to draw even if it does take me twice as long.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I’m a portrait artist and illustrator specializing in surrealistic colored pencil drawings. I draw realistic pictures of all kinds of people, places and things while putting my own surrealistic style into it. I mostly use colored pencil, but also use graphite, charcoal, or ballpoint pen depending on what fits best for each piece. I like making my drawings look as realistic as possible while making the overall concept surreal. Most of my drawings include a portrait where the face is morphed with another picture, like a scene from a movie or something. One of my favorite parts of drawing is making videos of the drawing process. What sets me apart from others is I put a split screen in my videos to show footage of the drawing as I’m drawing it, while the footage of the scene I’m drawing is playing below it. I try to convey the emotions of the scene into my art, and I think playing the scene alongside it helps bring that out.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
At one point I realized I was doing so many custom drawings for people that I didn’t have a portfolio of my own personal art that I wanted to create. I took a break from commissions for a while to spend time on drawings that I wanted to create for myself. At that time I was really into movies so I was drawing a lot of fan art of things like Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man and stuff like that. I also started making time-lapse videos of the drawing process and editing them and posting those videos as well. This is when I was really able to figure out my own personal style in drawing and decided I liked surrealism best.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I had been posting my art on my instagram for years before it slowly started getting an audience. I got really into creating fan art and used hashtags of art accounts in hopes they would share my art on their page. I just kept posting and eventually some of my pieces started getting noticed and shared. TikTok however was a different story. My first TikTok video I posted, which was of one of my drawings, got way more views then I was use to. I got thousands of followers just from that one video and a lot of people even went to my site and bought prints of my drawing. My advice for anyone would be to start posting videos of your craft on TikTok.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/JennaDriscollArt
- Instagram: @jennaadriscoll
- Youtube: Jen Driscoll
- Other: TikTok: @jd11art