We were lucky to catch up with Mara Whelan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

By the time I was in high school I had already figured that I wanted to pursue art in some way. At that point I’ve already been drawing for 4 years. My parents were always incredibly supportive and with easy access to the internet, it just made it so much easier to find talented artists that I could look up to and immolation. At I wasn’t a very popular person, but even outside my social circles I was at least known as the “art kid”. Making art just became my identity, and even when discussing other paths, I couldn’t really think of anything else I wanted to work towards. In middle school, when I first began drawing it was generally all I spent my time doing. I was also a soccer player at the time, albeit not a very good one, but I was able to get into a private team. My dad used to bug me to practice more so I could get better, one line I would hear on the daily was “If you practiced with the ball as much as you practiced drawing, you’d be unstoppable.”. I never did and was very easily “stoppable”. Couple years later I went to school for art not sports. Shows you which of those skills was more practical.

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

My name is Mara, and I am a freelance illustrator. As a lifelong lover a nature and fantasy my work tends to fall in one of those two categories or most often then not a combination of the two. I’ve been drawing for years and finally decided to go to art school to learn more about the craft and the industry. The experience somewhat shortened thanks to Covid. As professional illustrator I work with clients on a variety of different projects. From book covers, to license plates, to fun little illustrations of characters for product lines. Clients will tell me their ideas and I get to draw them. Together we’ll work on something that the client is happy with. I still have a good majority of my files on my laptop or iPad, and on occasion I’ll scroll through them. Being able to see how much my work has improved in such a short time has always made me proud of my work. Being able to visually see how far I’ve come. If I’ve worked with a client more than once, I’ll see my earlier work compared to the newest version and it means a lot to see how much trust clients put in me to keep coming back.

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

The best way I can say to support artists is by supporting their business, and that doesn’t even mean buying from them. It can be as simple as interacting or sharing with their social media posts. It also means respecting the costs when working with or buying from creatives. At the moment it’s not unheard of to hear big company’s stealing an artist’s work and mass producing it for a lower cost. Avoiding these cheaper knockoffs and going to the original source not only gets you a higher quality product but you’re supporting small businesses as well. At times it seems easier to just go the cheaper route if you think something is too expensive but it’s important to think of how much time is spent on artwork. Artist’s deserve a living wage too.

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

There’s a ton of rewarding aspects about being an artists, to me at least. The first being the most obvious. I love having the ability to create. Watching a blank canvas or a lump of clay turn into something has always been amazing. The second is being able to see how much I’ve progressed over the years, even if it’s just looking at a years worth of improvement. A lot can happen in a year. Being an artist or a creative person means you’ll never stop growing, there’s always room for improvement. The third reason ties in with my first. When coming up with a new project or idea there’s always going to be loads of prep work in the beginning. Seeing a project to from small sketches to a finalized project or even a physical tangible product is always so rewarding. Seeing a drawing on a mock up is one thing, to hold it in your hand is quite another.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mwhelanart.carbonmade.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marbarsss/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mara-w-514258116/