We recently connected with Juliana Xavier and have shared our conversation below.

Juliana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

Funny enough, the answer to both of those questions is a firm and resounding “yes!”. Although I am happy to be an artist, I can say – with a little too much confidence – that I also constantly wonder what it would be like to have a regular job.

Most artists will agree with me when I say: If you do something you love in life, it makes you happy; but if you turn it into a job to pay the bills, then it’s work; and work is work, no matter what.

Every job has ups and downs, but being an artist now requires at least 10 different skills that aren’t necessarily in our wheelhouse, just so that we can —maybe— be noticed to the point that someone buys something and we make some money for bills. There definitely are other jobs that are like this (and it sucks as well), but ‘regular jobs’ at least come with basic income.

What if you took all the financial uncertainty away from being an artist?

It would absolutely still be a job (gotcha didn’t I?); however it would be one that I’d be much happier to handle and I wouldn’t catch myself thinking about a regular job (well, only sometimes).

Juliana, 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 actually one of those people who’s never really wavered. I knew I wanted to be a comic book artist in my tweens (before I even knew it was a job you could get paid for) and got into a lot of trouble for constantly drawing in class.

When it was time for college, I started looking into doing illustration as a major, until I started following an artist online that majored in sequential arts! I applied for the same college, got my acceptance letter on the day of my birthday (which was pretty magical), and moved from Brazil to the US. The next four years were challenging, but I’m better for it for sure.

After graduation I moved around quite a bit, all while trying to find a job. After some time I moved back to Brazil and then started working online as an art freelancer. It was a really rough start and there were plenty of times where I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I even had to work as an English teacher for a few years while also living with my parents. But I did it all to try as hard as I could not to give up on art entirely.

Thankfully in 2017 I got hired by Worldspinner to be their lead inker on an app they were developing for TTRPG players, and I’ve been working with them ever since! I also have several different projects of my own that I work on here and there. I’m getting ready to pitch my first graphic novel sometime this year (fingers crossed)!

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

I had to unlearn many things, but here’s the main one which comes to mind:

Back when I was in college (2007-2011), almost all of our professors were men who worked on superhero comics. Consequently, I was pushed to try and draw things that were out of my comfort zones. But I, along with some of the other female students, actually left college feeling quite deflated as we’d been told that the type of work we enjoyed doing (mostly those inspired by shoujo manga and anime), would never land us a job.

In an attempt to make myself employable, I pushed my work away from the inspiration I loved, and became toxic about my own artistic background. Thanks to that, I was absolutely miserable for a couple of years as I tried my best to navigate through the rocky life of a freelancer.

One day, I just remember looking at my art and crying my heart out; I hated it, all of it, and felt like there was no fixing it – I even considered giving up altogether.

Thankfully, it was right about that time that the graphic novel boom really started, and it was being led mostly by female artists who had very similar backstories as me. They found success when they allowed themselves to go back to what they really enjoyed drawing and writing.

It took time for me to reprogram myself, after all, the life of an artist is never a straight path. Once I got back to drawing for me, things flowed better than they ever had before, and now I am back to fully loving the art process and enjoying what I do.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

There’s honestly so much we can do, but I think the bare minimum of it is simply to care. Right now the entirety of the corporate world is telling us that what we want is “content”, and it keeps pumping out so much of it that many of us feel fatigued. The ideal end-goal seems to have our very own “curated content” that’s unique and personalized. In truth, artists can already make that happen; all anyone has to do is commission an artist for an art piece!

Of course, not everyone has money to spend – but support can take many forms; trust me when I say that comments, likes and shares on social media really do help. You don’t have to like every artist out there, but if there’s a few whose work you do enjoy, boosting them on social media can make a world of difference.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://juliejubz.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/juliejubz
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/juliejubz
• Other: https://www.twitch.tv/juliejubz https://www.patreon.com/juliejubz https://ko-fi.com/juliejubz https://vgen.co/JulieJubz

Image Credits
JulieJubz (Juliana M. Xavier)