Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Steffani Christensen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Steffani, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been one of the most interesting investments you’ve made – and did you win or lose? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)

The best investment that you can make for yourself is continuing your eduction and investing in learning, growing and improving your skill set . What this looks like for every creative can be vastly different, whether it’s in exploring new materials, online courses or in person classes. It’s so important to foster personal growth in our creative journeys, water your creative garden if you will. Unfortunately, for those of us creatives that work full time creating content and projects for clients/others, we often don’t make the time to do this enough. So take that time , invest in yourself and continue to foster that personal growth.

Steffani, 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 have always been creative. Since I was a kid, I loved drawing, painting, sewing, baking , pretty much any craft I loved it. That carried me throughout my life, always as just a hobby and not a potential career , until I became a mom.

At the time , we couldn’t afford daycare for me to be able to go to work, but really needed to figure out some sort of income to help our little family. During this period of my life with our first child, I was sewing A LOT. So I decided to do it as a business. On top of sewing our own clothes, I started making custom purses, bags and cooking aprons. It was really fun and I enjoyed it a lot, but the take home profit and physical toll on my body for the amount of work involved really wasn’t worth it for me. While I was doing this, one of my good friends who owned a fabric company found out that I loved to draw, so she started working with me on making new custom fabric designs. This had to be done digitally , so here entered my first drawing tablet. I had never attempted any sort of digital design or painting before, but I was confident I could learn.

From the moment I began, I loved it. It was significantly harder to learn than I imagined, in comparison to working with traditional media like I was used to. The lack of sensory materials (touch/smell) and processing was a really hard learning curve for me. I started making some fabric designs from there. Because my strengths have always lain in portraits, on the side I would practice drawing some fanart of different characters from books that I loved. After doing this for a while, one of my author friends decided to take a chance on me and commissioned me to paint her book characters as my very first, real freelance job in the book business. If not for her, I am not sure where I would be now. Because she had faith in my abilities and believed in me, I now work full time as a digital artist specializing in book character portraits and covers. It’s been quite the adventure over the years, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

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

The best thing that society can do to help us is to encourage real life human artists. With the rise of AI , all of us are struggling in some way. Whether it’s financially, creatively, with inspiration, sheer overwhelm with content production, etc. it has been A LOT. There has been so much consumption of art, that there’s no more digesting it. It used to be that someone could spend weeks/months/years on once piece of incredible artwork, and the viewers would contemplate it. They would absorb the emotion behind the artists design, contemplate it, admire the work and attention to detail etc. Now, a lot of creatives, myself included, feel like we are drowning in an overwhelming sea of content, art theft, judgment and negative feedback. It’s everywhere, consuming every aspect of the industry. So to support us, buy from real artists, share their work, drop an encouraging word, come back and comment on something again even if you’ve seen it once already. Try to really understand the emotion the artist was feeling while creating the piece. Real, true art is filled with emotion and it never dies.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me , the most rewarding aspect of my work is making my clients work come to life. It is so rewarding to come together with individuals or a team and work on bringing these visions to fruition.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.artbysteffani.com
• Instagram: https://Www.instagram.com/artbysteffani