We recently connected with Phil Rood and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Phil, thanks for joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

Definitely sooner. I didn’t really begin pursuing art as a career until I was about 30 years old and that proved to be a big challenge.

Instead of figuring out a path and understanding that it could be a career for me when I was younger, I was kind of knocking around in my twenties, not understanding that it was a viable option for me to pursue. I spent a few years in the military then got out and moved to my hometown and then down to Florida. I was working warehouse and truck driving jobs, I got married and the family started growing. All the while, I was drinking heavily and just kind of wasting time.

It wasn’t until I got sober when I was 29 that I had any kind of clarity about what I wanted career-wise, or even as a passion to pursue. All that time I’d spent looking for direction could have been spent studying and working toward an art career. I went to school and got a degree in graphic design, which was a step in the right direction, but I found that I was in a place where I was competing for jobs with people ten years younger than me who were willing to work cheaper because they didn’t have three kids to raise. It became very demoralizing and filled me with a lot of regret for the decade I had lost–I eventually got over the harsh regret and settled into regular, run-of-the-mill regret.

Phil, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a comic artist and illustrator… and sometimes writer, and what that looks like currently is that I am working on my own projects. Think of it like making an independent film or writing a novel… making a property that is not commissioned.

I got here by way of failure…. which is not as harsh as it sounds. I have done all kinds of for-hire graphic design work, illustration, commissions, etc. since I graduated college in the early 2000s, but always as a side-hustle. I’ve continued to work as a truck driver throughout all that time. In December of 2021, I quit my day job and went full time as an artist/designer. I searched for work of all kinds and threw my portfolio at every listing I found that I was even remotely qualified for. Some jobs I landed and did well at. Some jobs I landed and was not a good fit for. Most jobs I did not land and by the end of the summer of 2022, I was back at work.

What I learned from that experience is that I should have been more focused in finding a specific kind of work. I should have found the kind of work I wanted to do and put all my efforts into that. I had drawn comics before the Great Self-Employment Experiment of 2022(as it has come to be known in my brain), and my most consistent and longest running client had been drawing a comic strip during that stretch, but it was also the one I enjoyed the most, so I decided that was what I would focus on in my art as a whole, but instead of searching for clientele to hire me for that, I would focus on my own work and I got busy drawing pages.

A couple years later, I’ve drawn a graphic novel, been published in an anthology, and have partnered with a great writer named Derek Glascock for a project we’re currently working on called “Sheppard”.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Just getting started was an exercise in resilience. Once I decided to start going to college to study graphic design, I found that I was not only pretty good at it, but I was doing it in a way that I really enjoyed, so I really dedicated myself to it. The challenge was that I had several other things that I was also dedicated to.

I was working full-time delivering beer, which meant I spent 50-60 hours per week on the clock.
I was going to school at night, which meant 4 hour classes 3 nights per week.
I was newly sober… that’s its own bag of hammers.
I was working on homework, studying, or working on projects on the nights and weekends I wasn’t at school.
My three sons were all under 10 years old which meant there were a lot of demands on my attention at home (which, admittedly, I was hit-or-miss about…. but I tried)
My wife was working in retail at the time, which meant odd hours, shifting schedules, nights, weekends, and impromptu double shifts… put up against my schedule, we sometimes went 2-3 days without physically seeing each other.

When we look back now, Christy (my wife) and I often say: “I don’t know how we did it”… and we don’t. But when we were in it, we just kept going

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

For the most part, I’m trying to draw things and tell stories that I am enthusiastic about making. I am driven by the idea that I am currently doing the best work of my life and I feel I’m only getting better at it, so everything is in service of that. I want to make steady income because that will buy me more hours to make more art. I want to market these stories so that the most people possible will be able to experience what I want to share with them. I know that my work isn’t for everyone, but I want everyone that my work is for to be able to find it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://philroodart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philrood75/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philroodthatillustratorguy
• Twitter: https://x.com/philrood
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtm9NvhioNCDkQNDVNPGWDQ