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

Hi Steve, thanks for joining 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?

I’ve always enjoyed drawing animals in an anthropomorphic style. Some of my earliest drawings as a pre-schooler are of dogs or cats dressed up in human clothes, or of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. seven years ago, I was trying to start an illustration business of doing wedding portraits, but I was finding it difficult to get it moving. My wife said she couldn’t imagine commissioning a portrait of herself, but said she would pay good money to have artwork depicting her dog. My roommates at the time had just gotten married, so I made them a gift of all four of their cats in a portrait, dressed up in fancy 1920s dress. I was surprised how emotional they were when they first saw it, and soon after that I begin to get orders from the neighborhood.

Step by step, I’ve learned how to make the business successful and how to effectively communicate with customers, and I’ll still be learning how to do those things better for years to come. I’ve found it’s important to capture a pet’s face and paws accurately, but even more important is learning what sort of “vibe” or atmosphere or style the customer is interested in having in their image, since almost all of the commissions I do have a theme. This odd type of work I’ve fallen into has led me into long rabbit holes of google-image-searching fashion trends, landscapes, various European art movements, watching 80s music videos and even meeting a pet here and there to get a feel for their personality. Occasionally, customers will send me complex and imaginative biographies of their pets, and these often feature fictional elements of what kind of life their pet would lead as a person. It’s so thrilling to see how creative people can be, and I’m always honored to be able to visualize what they are imagining.

Steve, 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’ve worked as both an illustrator and an art teacher for the last eight years, and I was a full time high school art teacher for a few years before that. I’ve done book illustration, editorial illustration, written and illustrated comics for both the web and for print, designed t-shirts, and I’ve run a pet portrait business since 2015. I mostly use traditional methods of making artwork–paint, ink, pencil, etc.–but I also use digital methods in my illustration. I help clients tell stories and express ideas. I’ve collaborated with many fiction and nonfiction authors throughout my career, and I’ve made hundreds of fantastical and stylish pet portraits for happy customers.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Probably the most rewarding aspect for me is the daily use of my hands in making something. I’ve noticed that many people I know have found high-paying jobs doing work that feels abstract to me. These are jobs that often play out on computers, on the internet, and on Slack channels. This type of work requires a lot of skill and communication savvy, but I know that there is sometimes a feeling of being disconnected from the tasks. My work can be quite a hustle, sometimes monotonous, and often time-consuming. Yet the sensation of working through a piece of artwork over the course of the work-day I find very satisfying.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

This is a complex question that requires a complex answer, but I’ll take a crack at it. I think an unhealthy tendency in our society is that everything is supposed to have a use. There’s not only pressure to make a lot of money, there’s also this additional anxiety we have that all the things we do throughout the day need to have some kind of utility. Even leisure and relaxation is thought of as necessary for you to “recharge” in order to get back to the serious business of work. But artwork and creativity exist in the realm of play, where there is no use. The pet portraits I make are pretty ridiculous if you think about it; they serve no purpose, they have no utility. Yet, people are prepared to spend a fair amount of money on them because I think for them it enriches their life a little. We know that children need to spend a lot of their time playing, being silly, and “wasting time.” I think us grown-ups need to do that more as well. I’m obviously not the first person to come to this realization, but it does feel like a tense time of extra pressure, and I think we can respond to that by being more like my pet portraits: ridiculous.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.steveteareillustration.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveteare/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/scteare