We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sal Tinoco a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sal, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

As someone who has done art my entire life, I sometimes feel silly making the choice to monetize it later in my life(34). While I understand that I am not old, I do of course ask myself why did I allow fear of failure, or fear of not being accepted by the masses hold me back in my twenties. However, things happen for a reason and as an eight year active duty service member, I have tools that were gained over the years that I would not have without the experience that life brings. I worked in retail sales for six years before joining the US Army in 2016 and both gave me confidence in talking to people but the Army has given me both the discipline to establish a good schedule and a much more fearless attitude about needing to appeal to anyone specifically.

From about the age of twenty and for the next ten years I was doing, at most, one piece per year and was able to maintain my skill. Then, like many people, when Covid-19 hit and we were all stuck at home, we had to figure out what to do with our time. I became obsessed with comic books and fell in love with the art of comic artists like David Finch, Jason Fabok, Jorge Jimenez, and the outlier of these artists Gustavo Duarte. Copying their works I thought I could definitely do this kind of work and began to challenge myself by swiping their work, but quickly gained even more appreciation for their skills when I tried to draw Batman from my own mind not just copying what I see and realized I did not have a strong foundation in fundamentals like form, proportions, and anatomy unless I was just copying it. So, I went to work on learning everything I could. I began taking my completed pieces that were all originals to work and posting them in my office and they gained interest.

This eventually lead to commissions for superhero pieces, tattoo designs, and logo designs for businesses. While I would not change a thing about my life because I have so many things I may not have had things been different (like a beautiful wife, and two wonderful children) I am just glad to have found the passion in it again and to really dive both feet in as I continue to build my business.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

First, I am a husband, father of two, and an active duty Staff Sergeant in the US Army. Next, I am passionate about doing comic book style art, and lastly I love to make people smile and laugh. Currently, I am running a sticker and personalized artwork company called Salty Stickers & Images, which has three main focuses: creating fun and silly hand drawn stickers at a reasonable price, custom artwork in digital or traditional fine art format, and logo design for businesses or personal use.

Salty Stickers as a business was my wife’s idea. She was looking at the art I was doing and simply said “you should do stickers.” It took me a whole year to see the vision. One evening I was reflecting on her idea of making stickers and thought, what a fun way to take the detailed work I usually do and spread it around to the community of people who like that kind of artwork. Then, I paired the detailed artwork with my desire to make people laugh and that is basically what most of my stickers are. Creating detailed work in a digital format drew attention from business owners in the local area and I started to get a few commissions from them, and then because of that network and the stickers, I began to receive commissions for t-shirt designs, tattoo designs, posters, etc.

The biggest appeal that I bring to the table with my clients has been that I create personalized professionally detailed work quickly. I have a 3 week format and typically get their work returned before then. Week 1 we talk about what it is that they envision. I find a lot of people have an idea but they lack the skills to execute it. Week 1 is also for quick thumbnail sketches, they get to pick 2 that will get more detail during week 2. The final week they select which option should be the final piece and I add all details to it in that last week.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Listening to a speech by Denzel Washington, he quoted Farrah Gray’s “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs,” and it really struck me. Being 34 years old reflecting on my life, realizing that when I was in my early 20s I was only chasing money (as many young adults do) but I wasn’t happy. Then my wife and I started building our family and all I wanted was stability, plus I was spending all my free time with the family or playing video games. Now, when I consider how I want to spend the rest of my working life, I can only think of doing art. Using the tools I’ve gained over the years in retail sales, the self-assurance I have gained through testing my limits time and time again in the Army, and utilizing my free time towards this bigger goal of being a full time artist, are the things that drive me. The thought of getting to my death bed and looking back on my life knowing I should have at least tried to do what I actually wanted to do, is what drives me.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the excitement expressed by a client when they finally get to see their ideas completed. They come to me with an idea, then I ask them a bunch of really pointed questions, which usually gives them confidence in my abilities. Then they wont see more about the project until there is a ton of detail added, and I can see the excitement growing. That energy exchange is my favorite part of doing art for commission.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @saltystickers89
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/njN7SLAsLrUxBxJW/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: @SaltyStickers89
• Other: TikTok – @SaltyStickers89
  Email – [email protected]