Hello, and welcome to design and business
conversations for creatives, and today I am chatting with you all about Anna.
So I met Anna on Instagram, and I was instantly drawn to her artwork and her
strong graphic style that was really relatable because it's kiwi
inspired and I love that and it's also got a lot of
nature in it and yeah. I just wanted to have you on
because I did a video a couple of weeks ago with Jo
from Simply Whyte Design and it went really well and it had good reception
and then I reached out to Anna and she was keen and here she is.
C - Just a little bit of background about yourself
A - I've been a graphic designer for about 18 years. I did a bachelor of media arts at Wintec
in Hamilton, and in my third year I fell pregnant with my first daughter,
Mia, and so she was always planned but just not quite then.
It actually helped me because instead of going out,
living the party life with my other friends, I was actually
in at the labs doing my graphic design, and I think I actually attribute my
better grades to being pregnant, because I didn't
have hangovers you see. C - not partying A - yeah, not partying.
A - So I actually did pretty well in that year, but I actually got toxemia
at the end, so that's a pregnancy related thing where you get, you see stars
everywhere, and you get dangerously high blood
pressure. It was touch and go whether I'd actually finish because I was so
sick, and they were like going to give me a grade, you know, based on my performance
but i really wanted to finish because i knew that I'd never go back,
you know, being a young mum getting back to study, it was unrealistic,
so I powered through, literally finished, and then ended up in
hospital for the last month of my pregnancy
on complete bed rest. We got moved off to Matamata with my husband, he was then my
fiance, but he had to get his act together too,
and he got a job in Matamata. I had a new baby, yeah it was a new life. My
friends were probably now on an OE, and I was feeling quite alone and
thinking, oh my gosh what's going to happen,
I didn't even have a license at that point, and we didn't even own a car. We
had nothing that empowered me, I really
needed to make something, you know, to provide for my child.
And then six months down the track, a job came up at the local printers. I was like
I really want this job, and I ended up getting it.
C - Oh yeah, Cool. A - It was great, so I got the job and they took a chance
on me. That's where I developed my love for printing and
paper. It was so neat, being able to see the projects from
development right through to seeing it printed on the press in
color, and I did a graphic communication apprenticeship with PrintNZ
and I actually came top of my year, the top graphic design print apprentice, and I
think that also comes back to me wanting to continue to learn to be
able to do the best for my family. So as well as being a young mum, I was
doing this now apprenticeship, so I was studying in
the evenings, and I also did a business management course, I was traveling back
and forth to Hamilton to do that. My husband,
I couldn't have done it without him. My love of graphic design
then turned into a love of digital drawing, and so I started to creative
outlet, because after all that graphic design
work, I was doing stuff for clients which I loved, but I need to then
do stuff with no boundaries for myself. My artwork became
my way to release my energy, and my sister was like, I know a good
shop, your work would be perfect, and then I was like what, and she's like yeah I'll
go in and see them, and then so she's the one - C - Oh that's so cool. A - She was the
catalyst, she was the catalyst. C - An advocate. A - Yeah, she believed in my work
and I thought it was just a bit of fun for me, but she was like, oh no you can
tell people about this, and these days I'm very passionate about
my art, and I'm taking it really seriously, and
after doing graphic design for so long, I'm wanting to now pursue and see
if i can push forward and sustainably do it as a full-time artist.
C - Cool, so graphic designer merged into more of an artist. A - Some of the work
from a previous challenge, it's sort of digital art.
C - Everyone needs to see this A - This is from an old Inktober challenge,
and so, digital art is the portrait, and then
then ink pen. I'm actually, I'm a person that suffers
from anxiety, so doing these sorts of patterns is sort
of meditative for me. C - Therapeutic, I get that.
A - Yeah, so these intricates, stay wild, that's,
yeah, so that sort of just comes out of me,
organic, so that's sort of where I'm at, I have been
on Pinterest, and so I've been exploring inspiration as a way now to bring that
color into my work, really another way I've come into my own as an artist doing
100 day challenges. In Inktober, it's been really good for me
in developing a style. I used to drink quite a lot of alcohol,
and, not on a regular basis, but when I drank, I drank far too much,
and I think that was a way of me dealing with my anxiety,
so rather than feel the feelings, I would drink alcohol, and it was becoming a
problem for me, and I wasn't liking the person I was becoming,
and it wasn't good for my children. I've actually not drunk alcohol
for two years now, and I attribute that to the 100 day
challenge, because I really wanted to do this challenge.
C - Cool, well my first question on the list is, why did you start your business? But I think that
you've already mentioned that, and that what I'm hearing,
and it's coming through quite clearly is, everything that you've done has been
with your children in mind right from the get-go.
A - Definitely, definitely, and so everything
to provide the sort of best life for my family, but to be a good role model for
them as well.
C - What inspires you?
I was really inspired by the Pop Art movement, I fell in love with
Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol back in high school when
I discovered them in Art History. C - Me too. A - Yeah, just absolutely love them right,
that was showing through in my work, the love of the Ben Day dot,
and that sort of linked up with my love for print too, and it sort of just
evolved, you know, I do a lot of black solid lines,
and i think maybe that's the Pop Art aspect coming through. Other things
that inspire my art, is my love for the outdoors, I'm
sure a lot of New Zealanders, you'd hear a lot of New Zealand artists
speak about their love of flora and fauna, but I think
it's, we're so grateful where we live, and so that really does come through.
C - And one thing that drew me to your art, in particular, were the big pieces
that have a lot of ferns, and fantails, and tuis, and
that real kiwiana vibe, but the natural side. A - My love of that just
comes out when you draw, you don't, I don't necessarily sometimes have
a plan, just a blank bit of paper.
C - I'm very similar in that respect, and we were just talking about that
before chatting on camera, yeah mood based,
kind of, create as we feel and I think that's cool because you get
really authentic pieces that way, hey. My next question
is, can you describe your process?
Okay, so my current process, it's evolved over quite some time, but being a graphic
designer for 18 years, pretty old school in my methods.
Currently I'm drawing in ink, like in my scrapbooks, I suppose from doing my
challenges, then I'm scanning them into my computer,
and then I'm taking them into Adobe Illustrator, and I'm redrawing them
in different light as vectors. And so that's my current process. I'm looking at
getting an iPad Pro with a pencil, yeah. So i'm researching into that.
C - I think you'll like that, I think, that's, so we have, I think we have very similar
style in that respect, when it comes to design,
I'm the same, I vectorize everything, I'm an illustrator girl, you know, you
know, with graphic designers there's some
people who are Indesign people, or Photoshop people, or there's different
areas that you connect with better, but we're
fairly similar in that respect, we're quite graphic, vector-based,
design and art. Do you have your sketchbooks?
A - Okay. C - I think, show your sketchbooks.
A - Okay, what have we got. C - A little insight to the process
A - So that's one of the first ones I did, when I started getting out the pen so.
C - So on pen, pen to paper first, and then you'd take this into Illustrator,
and then vectorize it. A - Vectorize it, yes. And why I like to vectorize it is,
because it's obviously our graphic design nature coming through, once you
vectorize it, it will never lose quality at
any scale. I actually still use a mouse, like click, click, so every time I do the
pen - C - Oh, same, same. A - So you can imagine why the pencil is
going to change my life. C - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same, same here, I'll show you later.
Yeah, if anyone watches it, if you
watched Anna or I on the mouse, vectorizing stuff like,
if anyone gets insight on that process, I'm like what,
whoa, because it's just like ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.
A - When I studied, there wasn't really the internet, we went to
the library and got inspiration from journals and magazines.
Adobe Illustrator, I don't think existed, we had free hand, and we had these
different applications, and the digital cameras wasn't a thing,
so you had to send a photograph away to be drum scanned, so
it'd take three days, and it was really expensive.
So the industry has changed so much. C - And you've had to evolve with that.
A - The whole thing. So even though I studied bachelor of media arts, obviously what I
learned there, you know, still foundations but the
applications didn't exist or anything, so the learning has now come from
YouTube. It's been so beneficial, so YouTube's really
inspiring, there's so many good tutorials on there to teach me Illustrator, because
I had to be self-taught, because - C - Yeah, yeah, of course you didn't learn it at, yeah.
A - No, I didn't learn it at school, so I had to up skill, so you've
got to continually, because that evolution, I mean, like I said, when
I started you didn't have digital cameras. C - I feel like you
look my age, and I learnt on Illustrator at high school,
so it's, speaking to you, and thinking, I'm kind of
putting you at my age level, but yeah, to think of that, I didn't even think of that.
A - Yeah, but do you know what my high school design teacher told me, Anna
get away from the computer, you're using it too much,
because it wasn't a thing. You don't do it on a computer. C - And now everyone's like
get off the computer, you're on it too much. A - Yeah, before, a designer telling a
graphic designer get off the computer, because I'd done up my sketches but I
wanted to put it into the computer, but she was just,
no, your finals were drawn and stuff. C - My next question is, do you have
any advice for a newbie, so someone that's similar to you,
and wanting to start working as an artist full-time,
or even part-time, but as a living? A - Absolutely. It's important that you've
got the right support network, so you make sure that
you think about it logically, and just actually make out financially you can do
it, that you're ready. First, I started bridging it, like I was
working a full-time job, and like I said, I'd get up early and do it in my spare
time, but the key thing is if you love what
you do, just go for it. The biggest thing that can
stop yourself, is literally yourself, and that's some of the biggest
barriers is me stopping myself, and truly believing that I can do it.
Connect with like-minded people, you become who you surround yourself with,
so make sure you're connecting, reaching out to the people in your community, you
can all sort of help each other on your journey, and
uplift and inspire each other. Mindset is so important.
As a person with anxiety, you can let yourself down and you can't follow it
through, you can get, you've got to look after yourself.
C - Yeah, I have two sayings, one is, you are your only limit to your dreams,
you are going to be your own worst critic. A - Yeah, absolutely.
So just get out there, and just do it. C - It's really true, because I think if you
put in those barriers yourself, you're never going to be
ready, you're never going to have the best camera, you're never going to,
you know, so it's just like. A - Exactly. You keep moving the bar each time, because once you've done that you
think, oh my gosh, I need that too, and it's a little bit of fear maybe, the
fear that's projecting. But you've got to start, because guess what, you
don't know what you don't know. You have no idea until you get there and
then you learn, and then you've always got to learn from
your mistakes, because mistakes teach you. Well now you know what will work, try
that, try that, try that, keep going. C - Yeah, great, great advice there, thank you.
So then, what is the future of your biz? A - Well, the future of my business is I am
wanting to be able to sustain myself as a full-time
artist, and financially contribute to my family,
and to continue to do what I love, and as I
learn more, and grow as an artist, I then want to be
able to give back to the art community. It can be a lonely road
sometimes, some people aren't forthcoming with information, you learn so much along
the way. I like to share the nuggets I learn to
help other people, because I'm about winning together.
So I hope to be able to share with. C - Well that's awesome, because that's what
we're doing here today. A - Yeah, same sort of thing, being able to give back.
C - Or sharing your experience might help somebody that's feeling
a similar thing, like you mentioned with your anxiety before, and how drawing is
an escape or a release from that, I think that a lot of people
will connect with that, and you know, it's quite comforting,
if you're having those kind of feelings, to know that you're not the only one.
A - Exactly. C - Yeah I think you're doing good things,
and just lastly, where can people find you?
A - You can find me on my Facebook page, which is Anna Mollekin Art, or you can
find me on my Instagram, which I'm a regular, I love Instagram so, @AnnaMollekinArt.
C - That's how we met. A - Yeah, Instagram is wonderful.
I've connected with so many amazing people through Instagram.
Find me now on Pinterest, thanks to Cheyney. C - Yes, Pinterest, we love Pinterest.
A - We love Pinterest, yes your video was amazing, that's, Cheyney
reignited my love for Pinterest, I watched your video like three times,
because i kept having to pause to get all the goodness out of it,
Anna Mollekin Art too. Anna Mollekin Art is where it's at. C - And I will link all
of these below. Thank you for coming Anna, and thank you
for watching. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up,
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and we'll see you next time, bye.