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

Hi Johnny , thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I have been able to make a full time living off of my art. It’s been pretty rough, honestly.
Art’s not a necessity. So, it’s kind of equivalent to living paycheck to paycheck.
I started when I was 17 going to school for commercial art at Sowela Technical College in Lake Charles, La. It was a horrible experience. The head of the curriculum would tell me, literally, every day that my art style was ” A passing fad and I needed a ‘ real ‘ art style “. I always found it funny that, despite me winning Gold, Silver and Bronze for the 2 years I was there at the student art show in illustration, she would still say that.
Eventually I got tired of hearing that, so I dropped out and had the opportunity to start apprenticing at the best tattoo shop in town at the time, Ultimate Image Tattoo Studio. Sadly, hurricane Laura destroyed it. I worked at Ultimate for several years and learned and started doing tattoos. But, sadly, the stress of the machines vibrating amplified my carpal tunnel to the point where I had to give up tattooing.
While I was tattooing, me and my boss Dreek, who was also a huge nerd, would do comic and anime conventions and sell our art. Once I had to give up tattooing, I decided to take up the convention scene full time and focus solely on my art and making my own comics.
One year I did C2E2 and Marvel and DC editors were there doing portfolio reviews. I brought examples of my works and almost word for word, I got the same response from both of them: ” We really like your style. Your story telling is good, you can work on this and this, but we would never hire you. Your style is too cartoony. People don’t want that anymore. People want realism. ” And when I responded with ” Well, what about people like Joe Mad, Humberto Ramos and Skottie Young? ” I was told that ” They were grandfathered in and if it was the 90s, they would have already hired me. ”
So, with that, on the drive back me and my wife at the time just spit out the stupidest ideas for a book the entire ride and with that, as soon as I got home, I started working on my first major project: 2 Tin Bean Cans F*cking. It was a story about anthromorphic bean cans on a quest to kill the man who created them and it’s just ridiculousness wrapped in absurdity. I kickstarted all four issues to a pretty good success and it lit a fire in me to keep making my books. Since then, I’ve kickstarted over a dozen different titles. Making my own worlds and telling the stories I want to tell, how I want to tell them.
One thing I did realize is that in the Artist Alley, there’s a ton of folks that treat it like it’s still high school and have a clique mentality about it and will refuse to help out or give advice unless it benefits them. After years of trial and error I’ve created a nice system that gets me by.
I try to help out others when I can and hope they do the same down the road.

Johnny , 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?

Oh. I kind of answered all that with the previous question. :P But, let me see if I can add more to it.
I’ve always had a fun approach to my art. I’m a big fan of bright colors and dynamics.
I have a set of art prints ( eventually I want to start a clothing line with them ) based off of the premise of ” Never fear love “, a poly positive set.
My original art prints, a lot of the time, symbolize love and loss. It’s the same with my original comics as well. My book ” The Devil In I ” deals with the agony one goes through when you witness the worst of things and have to deal with the lost of a loved one.
But, on the other hand, I have a lot of books that are just fun, action filled romps. Like Demon’s Redemption, The Fencer and Special Agent Harambe.
I have a series that myself and my friend Matt Chambers are working on called Fluff’s Fury about a young girl who goes on a quest for revenge after her teddy bear is killed.
It’s just a silly and fun time.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, honestly…. It’s the seeing people’s faces light up when they see something in my portfolio that just clicks with them. Be it an original piece or a fanart piece and when people read my books and they react to it. One person came to me after reading my book ” The Last Reaper ” and told me that it made her cry. I was immediately like ” Oh shit! I’m so sorry! ” and she said ” Oh, no! It’s the good kind of cry. It was a powerful story. ”
When things like that, it makes all the pain and suffering that goes with being your own boss worth it.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Honestly… With how social media and all that works, just interacting with artists does a world of difference! A simple like, share or comment puts them positively in the algorithm on Meta’s sites and not to mention that said algorithms change constantly and what puts you positively in them constantly shifts. That’s the hardest thing about being an artist nowadays. It you don’t have a huge audience already, it’s an absolute nightmare to get started unless you want to just throw money at these services.
So, just interacting is the best thing anyone can do.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.JohnnySegura3rd.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnnysegura3rd/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnnySeguraIII
• Youtube: www.Youtube.com/JohnnySegura3rd
• Other: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/johnnysegura3rd Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JohnnySegura3rd

Image Credits
All me.