Professional Practice

Mona Torgersen

· Who am I?

· How do I work?

· What inspires me?

· Self-promotion

· Exhibitions

· What now?

· Links

Who am I?

«Every good painter paints what he is.» - Jackson Pollock

If the above statement is true I am pastel-colour-ed and most likely naked. But it wasn’t always so. Three years ago I would have been a gloomy, dark and lonely creature. And you know what? I was all those things. When I started this degree I was recovering from a depression, one I had been struggling with for months before moving to England. I had lost nearly all my ambition and joy in life, and I was desperately clinging to the hope that moving somewhere else and focusing on art would help me find my way out of this mis-ery. And it did! As my mental health improved, my work changed. Today I create vibrant and colourful images, a tremendous contrast to my older work, and I have never been happier.

June 2011 vs. April 2014

As illustrators we take words, concepts and ide-as and we visualize them. We make them easier for other people to understand, and some might see us as mere tools. We are too commercial for the fine artists and too artistic for the graphic designers. We inhabit a space somewhere in-between these two worlds, and it is up to each illustrator what side he or she wishes to lean more towards. As it turns out, my work leans more towards the fine art world, as my inner self pours out into my work. Perhaps more so than I thought.So how has my work developed during three years on an illustration course?As well as what I just said, I have also devel-oped my technical skills quite a lot. When I first started I was not very good at drawing, as I had mainly worked with photography and photo-ma-nipulation up until that point. Going from a pho-to-based work method to one where I had to draw was a challenge, and it is something I am still working on today. But I have definitely im-proved, and I will continue

to practise for the rest of my life. One thing that has remained consistent since I started is that my work is mostly digital. I use a Wacom tablet to paint in Photoshop, and even the little traditional work I do I will scan and edit digitally.My recent work has very clean lines, a limited col-our palette and no texture. When I was younger I used to put a texture with low opacity on top of my images to hide flaws, but now I only use it if I feel it adds something to an image. For my pre-major project I worked in black and white, but I realized I need colour in my life and for my final outcome for the major project I have used only bright colours and no black. I feel this suits me better, as I am quite a colourful person and I think working with colours is one of my strongest sides as an illustrator.Now, let’s look away from the technical aspects of my work and focus more on the content.

All of my images depict characters, wether they are humans or something else. The human con-dition will never cease to amaze me, and I try my best to question and analyze it. I am never afraid of offending anyone with my work, and nudity, sexuality and religion is something you are sure to find traces of in my illustrations. I also try to incor-porate a bit of humour in my illustrations.

How do I work?

I seem to switch between two different methods: the first one involves sketching down ideas on a piece of paper. These sketches are usually very rough and not very good looking, but they help me try out different ideas and compositions very quickly. Some artists have beautiful, interesting sketchbooks, almost a piece of art in itself. My sketchbooks are a mess, only meant for my own eyes. After sketching an idea up, I will either scan it or just start painting directly in Photoshop. While I paint I take screenshots along the way, so that I can easily compare screenshots and figure out what works best. It’s very interesting to look back on the first screenshots after I have finished a piece, just to see how much it has changed since I first started working on it.

The tarot cards that I made for my major project involved creating very smooth lines, which took a lot of time to perfect. I would zoom in to 100% and just concentrate on getting the linework as smooth as possible. This gave the line-weight a hand-made qual-ity, something that can easily be lost when doing digital work. It was a way of working I had never practiced before, but one I found to be very enjoyable.

I try to work with a limited (albeit bright) colour palette, as I find this makes an image “clean-er” and more harmonious to look at. I am also very concerned about creating a balance in the composition, I don’t like it when an image feels heavier on one side. As a “sufferer” of OCD I realize I may find this more important than most people, and moving an object two pixels to the left to make an image more bal-anced is something I enjoy far more than I probably should.

The tarot cards that I made for my major project involved creating very smooth lines, which took a lot of time to perfect. I would zoom in to 100% and just concentrate on getting the linework as smooth as possible. This gave the line-weight a hand-made quality, something that can easily be lost when doing digital work. It was a way of work-ing I had never practiced before, but one I found to be very enjoyable.I try to work with a limited (albeit bright) colour palette, as I find this makes an image “cleaner” and more harmonious to look at. I am also very concerned about creating a balance in the com-position, I don’t like it when an image feels heavier on one side. As a “sufferer” of OCD I realize I may find this more important than most people, and moving an object two pixels to the left to make an image more balanced is something I enjoy far more than I probably should.

What/who inspires me?

I think one of the most important things we can do in life is to try to understand other people. A piece of art is like a glimpse into someone’s mind, and when we look at it we see things from their perspective, which in turn expand our own minds. Looking at art is necessary in order to lead a cre-ative lifestyle, and as illustrators we need to be aware of trends and contemporary artists.

Camille Rose GarciaI first discovered the art of Camille Rose Garcia when some friends gave me one of her books “Tragic Kingdom”. I fell in love immediately upon viewing the cover, I didn’t even have to open the book to know that this was right up my alley. Her work is dark and creepy, yet still manages to re-mind me of vintage Disney cartoons. This com-bination of cute and creepy is what makes me love her work, as it reflects the duality of human nature. I am a firm believer that no one is 100% good or bad and art that reflects this is very in-teresting to me. Garcia invites you into a strange wasteland filled with eerie characters and gloomy landscapes, yet despise how creepy it all is, the images are still beautiful to look upon.

LoishLoish is one of my favourite artists of all-time. I have been following her work since I first discov-ered it on the website deviantART back in 2007. Her characters are charming and inviting, and the way she works with light and colour is very inter-esting. She skillfully adds a subtle hint of texture to her digital paintings, which makes such a big difference. Another great thing about her work is that there is a real sense of diversity in her charac-ters – they are not all white, skinny girls.

Alexander JanssonAlexander Jansson is another long-time favourite of mine. The Swedish artist masterfully combines traditional and digital media to create the most wonderful worlds, full of strange little creatures. He, like Garcia, manages to find the balance be-tween cute and creepy, and his pictures are like whimsical fairytales that I desperately want to read. Unfortunately he has been unsuccesful at publishing his own book yet, but I am certain there will be one in the future. There is only so long a tal-ent like that can go unpublished. His work is defi-nitely not overlooked though – his clients include both Disney and the New York City Ballet.

80s cartoonsThe aesthethics of 80s cartoons is something I just can’t get enough of. The bright colours, the big hair, the freaky fashion – it’s all wonderful, and it served as a great source of inspiration for my major project. A particular favourite of mine is the 1986 cartoon “Moon Dreamers”, that tells the sto-ry of a group of celestial people who create good dreams for the children on earth. I had a VHS tape of it when I was a child, and I would watch it over and over again. As I was working on my major project I found all the episodes on YouTube and I watched it while I was drawing.

Self-promotion

Having an online presence is vital if you want to make it as an illustrator today. It is a quick and easy way to look up someone’s work and to find their contact details. It also allows people outside of the industry to follow your work. I follow a lot of artists online, and I want people to be able to do the same with me.

WebsiteI have created my website using moonfruit.com, it was an easy way of building an impressive looking website and it will be easy to update and maintain it. I use the same logo and background image on all my accounts online, to make it consistent and professional-looking. On my website I have a gal-lery with a selection of my best work, a portfolio if you wish. There is also an “about me”-section, a contact form and links to other places you can find me online. In the “about me”-section I use a self-portrait that is consistent with my style. I use the same self portrait on all my accounts.

FacebookI have made a Facebook page that people can “like”. It is great for quick updates and for post-ing progress-shots and other images I wouldn’t post on my website. It is nice to have a facebook page people can like, because then my work will automatically appear in their newsfeed and they don’t have to leave Facebook to find me. Seeing as most people use Facebook these days, this is a great advantage. It also allows me to easily an-swer any feedback people might have.

TwitterTwitter is similar to Facebook in that people can follow me on it and I will post things I wouldn’t post on my website. It’s great to use hashtags to create a bigger audience and you can easily com-municate with other artists and potential clients by tweeting them. It’s also nice to follow other art-ists and people in the industry to keep up to date with that’s happening in the art world.

BlogI have a tumblr blog where people can follow me, and it’s great if I want to write a more in-depth and detailed post about something. Then I can post a link to the blogpost on Facebook and twit-ter for anyone interested in reading it. There is also a great art community on Tumblr, and using hashtags can really help build an audience. There is also the possibility of being “featured” by the Tumblr staff, and then your work will reach out to a vast amount of people.

Society6 storeI have created a Society6 store, where I can sell my work. You just upload your art work and it can be sold as art prints, stretched canvases, mugs, clocks, rugs, phone-cases, pillows and more. It’s great to have in case somebody wishes to buy my work.

Promotional materialsI made my own business cards and some stickers to use as promotional materials. They are easy to bring along to events and to give out to people, and I have made a habit of leaving my business cards in places I visit, kind of as a joke, but also to promote myself. You never know who might see it!

ExhibitionIn February I was a part of a small group of illus-trators who decided to put up an exhibition in the SIX Gallery in Boscombe. We decided that “Ex-plore” would be the theme for the exhibition, and it was up to each illustrator how to interpret that. I made a piece featuring a girl pulling out her own intestines, a metaphor for self-discovery. I made sure to make it in pretty pastel colours, to avoid it being too dark and gloomy. The private view was great, and the exhibition was open for a week. It was also a silent auction, and we managed to sell all the work.

So what now?I know that most people plan on being freelance illustrators after graduating, but I have chosen a different path. I feel like I’m not done learning yet, and I’d like to explore other areas within the cre-ative industry, so I have applied for university in Norway. Education in Norway is free, so I figured I might as well give it a go. I have applied for a three year course in Virtual Art and Design at Hedmark University College. It is a course for people who wish to work in the art department of film-, an-imation- and game productions. They will teach you how to do digital painting, concept art and 3D-modeling, and I think that if I can combine that with this illustration degree I will be able to achieve the kind of career I want. All that remains now is to see if I get in – I will know on the 20th of July. If I don’t, I will definitely give the freelance career path a go, but I’m hoping (and also think) that I will get a place on the course. If I do, then hopefully the future me will work in the art department of a new upcoming Disney film. Well, I can dream at least. One thing is for certain: I will definitely have a career in the creative industry.

LinksWebsite: monatorgersen.moonfruit.com

Facebook: facebook.com/monamakesthings

Twitter: twitter.com/monamakesthings

Blog: monatorgersen.tumblr.com

Society6: society6.com/monatorgersen