We recently connected with Stanislav Osipov and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Stanislav thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
When I stop and think of the things I know how to do, it always seems like it’s not that many. Or maybe its a lot compared to someone else, I really don’t know. After looking at other artists work I always feel like there is so much more I can learn. I know how to draw with graphite, charcoal, liners, brushpens and paint pens. I can paint with oils, acrylics, water colors and gouache no problem. I can sculpt with anything from natural clay to polymer clay and everything in between. I can learn how to use any medium just by watching someone else do it a few times. Even if I’ve never tried using a certain material, if I see someone else use it properly first, then I have no problem using it myself. Before I started learning by watching people I would just practice on my own. I am self taught and what that means is I just always had a sketchbook with me so eventually I stopped sucking. If I had the life experience I do now when I was younger the number one thing I would do differently is not drink booze. I wasted so much time doing nonsense when I could have been creating. My biggest obstacle in getting into art was always myself. People around me would believe in me but I didn’t. This led to time spent trying to escape instead of just putting out work. Theres been times when I give up for a while and don’t draw at all. If I could go back I would simply have practiced more. Just basic fundamentals like figure drawing, landscapes and still-lifes. I think that once you understand how to build objects from 3d shapes and understand lighting and proportions, thats when you can truly draw anything.
Stanislav, 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?
My name is Stanislav Osipov. I go by Beebosloth online and I like to create. My main skillset is Illustration but I enjoy painting and writing. I actually just released a children’s book autobiography. It’s about a skeleton who picks up trash. Drawing has been a huge part of my life but I never thought I could make a living from it. Thats probably why I go into the industry so late. Beebosloth was born in 2017 and has had its fair share of ups and downs but it remains strong. I sell my paintings directly to collectors and I show at galleries whenever I can. When I’m not creating large scale artworks I talk about art, draw, paint and complain about things on my first Youtube channel Beebosloth. I also make quick drawing tutorials for kids on my second youtube channel Stan Draws. I have very limited free time so commissions have become a rarity but I have a few open slots every year. I used to sell my own merch and I still have some stuff on my website but as of late I have stopped making custom goods as I have been focusing on other projects, My main merch store is on Threadless so if you see any of my stuff being sold elsewhere its probably a bootleg. As for bootlegs, oh man, my work has been stolen and sold all around the world. Its gotten so bad that I’ll see stickers of my work all around different cities that I didn’t even make. All in all I am just a guy who likes to make things for people to enjoy. Most of my work involves the human skeletal system but thats just because I think everyone can empathize with my work better because deep down, everyone is just a skeleton. I think what sets me apart from other artists who draw skeletons and skulls is that mine aren’t stale. each time I draw a new skeleton its not just a copy of some reference image found online. I like to draw my characters by creating my own references using photos of myself or of my replica skeleton in my garage. The words I add to my images are also shared thoughts and insights into how I perceive the world around me. With my work I try to remind people that life is precious and every day should be treasured. I think its important for everyone to have some skeletal imagery in their homes. It’s easy to get all bummed out on life and start wasting it. But if you take a look a skeleton it might remind you that your time is limited and that alone should make you wake up a bit.
If I look at everything I have done I would have to say that I am most proud of my sketchbook drawings. For the first 3 years of Beebosloth I drew almost every day and some of those drawings have circulated the entire globe. I never would have thought my drawings of skeletons could be that sought after, I have around a thousand drawings if not more of just skeletons alone. If you want to see them all they are not on my instagram, although a good amount are, so I recommend checking it out. I do want to show them all off so I have been uploading sketchbook tours to my Youtube. Anyone who is interested in drawing, or talking about art or learning to draw better, come and find me and I maybe something I have made will help you!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The older I get the more I realize just how important education is. The public education system seems to make kids hate learning. At least thats what it did for me. I hated school and the idea of going there to sit in class and waste time listening to the class discuss The Great Gatsby or some other such nonsense. Only when I finished high school and college did I realize that learning doesn’t have to suck. You can learn about all sorts of interesting things, not just proper sentence structure or American history. If you figure out what you want to pursue in life then learning becomes one of the biggest joys. So now I am at a point in my life when I enjoy creating educational content. I like making drawing tutorials for kids or just drawing in front of a camera to show my process. As humans, we learn through experience and watching someone create art is pretty much that. Whats more, you can always pick up a pen and follow along. I think thats why people loved Bob Ross so much. While watching his programs you may feel that maybe painting isn’t so hard. And then you try it and realize, hey, it really isn’t difficult if you aren’t afraid of making mistakes. After all, mistakes are just opportunities in disguise. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to make art, videos, games and books that will educate as well as entertain.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Social media can be a fickle mistress. Back in 2020 I was riding high on Instagram with around 340 thousand followers and I though I was indestructible. Around august of 2020 I created a collection titled We’ve Gone Postal and released it on Instagram thinking it would sell out as all of my previous capsules did. But something insane happened instead. Let me set the stage here. Prior to this “event” I would post almost daily and get 10 thousand likes a post on a slow day. I know what you are thinking, big whoop, get on with it. So I will. Because of this, I got pretty spoiled and every time I had a new sticker pack come out or a new collection come out it would sell out in a few days. Life was good. I was kicking ass and taking names. But then We’ve Gone Postal dropped and it all changed forever. I posted like I usually did at 11 am and I didn’t see any sales coming through but I didn’t think anything of it. I waited until 4 pm of the same day to log back into the gram and when I did what I saw made my heart stop. The post had 160 likes and zero comments. I couldn’t believe it. No one had seen this post and no one had even checked out the collection. Every subsequent post met the same fate. It was as if I had been separated from my audience by an iron curtain. I canceled the collection and removed all posts relating to it from my account but the problem persisted. And not only were my posts invisible, I started losing followers like lemmings off a cliff. I had never seen such a mass exodus of followers from anyones account much less my own. I was losing up to 600 followers a day for a while. Then it slowed down to 400 a day, then 200, now its anywhere from 20-80 leaving every 24 hours. To this day I have no idea what happened. I went from drawing and posting daily, gaining followers and growing my account to losing contact with everyone and being bled out like a dead pig. This was a huge blow to my morale as I did not know what the cause was or how to fix it. Needless to say it completely destroyed my business at the time and I had to pivot my strategies but that is a story for another time. The moral here is that I did not give up even though the Meta gods are against me, I am unsinkable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.beebosloth.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beebosloth/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beebosloth/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beebosloth/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/beebosloth?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/beebosloth
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwVg8NEBV4zl1H6nPS3tpcw
Image Credits
Stan Osipov