Artist Interview with lemonGHOST (Patreon)

Beats: How long have you been drawing?

lemonGHOST: I've been drawing ever since I was a kid, but I only started to take art seriously at 17 when I realised I could make a career off it

Beats: When you say possibilities of a career, what were the signs of that?

lemonGHOST: I was initially studying at a univiersity for a programming degree, during this time I bought a digital tablet and drew a lot for fun. However after a year, I realised coding and numbers were just not for me, so I made a bold decision to drop out to go to an art school to further my skills. Although it was only until I was 20 I started receiving commissions

Beats: Hmm so before you went art school, im assuming you taught yourself a lot abt fundamentals?

lemonGHOST: I didn't think much about fundamentals or the basics until I was in uni, prior to that I just drew on and off for fun whenever I felt like it. But yeap during that one year in univiersity I taught myself a lot of fundamentals through watching Korean art channels

Beats: Cool, any art channels or videos you especially recommend?

lemonGHOST:
1. 네오아카데미 (Neo Academy)

2. hide channel【顔と体の描き方講座】

3. Naoki Saito Illust Channel

as for Neo academy, you wont understand a thing unless you speak korean, but you can learn alot from just looking at their speedpaints

Beats: Cool, some familiar names

Hmm how do you think uni helped improve your skills beyond what you already self studied?

lemonGHOST: Not so much, I came into artschool naively thinking it woulld be "let's have fun and draw!" but it ended up kinda just trying to package me up for the AAA gaming industry, which I'm not interested in. So to answer, I learned some fundamentals here and there, but most of it was irrelevant and am mainly self-taught

Beats: So lets break that down, your use of color and lighting is quite nice, how much of that would you attribute to studying vs uni?

lemonGHOST: The way I color and do lighting is completely self-taught from studying other artists on twitter, however there was a single class in my second year that changed the way I view coloring digitally and has impacted greatly how well I understand my color theory. So i'd say 80/20

Beats: Cool, who are some big inspirations of yours?

lemonGHOST: I would say @CiloRanko, @soOno2020, and @poppuqn on twitter

Beats: Cool, so how does an average study look for you? Do you directly try to emulate/study the art you like before applying it to your own subjects?

lemonGHOST: I actually do a 1 to 1 study of a specific piece of art and breakdown how it's done, then I try applying the things I learned on a drawing of my own

Beats: Oh cool, mind sharing one (or if ever you do an nsfw one that's fine too)

lemonGHOST: hmmm might be abit hard to share since they are technically tracings and copy work meant for study purposes only, so would be better If I don't show it

however in terms of other studies I do in regards to just drawing and not color, I do alot of photo studies from pinterest

Beats: Oh can we see some of those?

lemonGHOST:

Beats: Really awesome how you're able to push the lighting. Is that somethign you've just learned to do by now, or do you reference other pieces/set it up in 3d models?

lemonGHOST: nope, since anime is a very stylized, you can't do lighting studies 1 for 1 with photos (although referencing from it is fine if you have enough knowledge). I studied lighting from other artists to understand the simplified shadows that are usually casted on a character. So for the most part It all comes from my own head + some real life references

Beats: Good advice. What would you say are some things that really elevated your art? For example for me it was construction and simplifying stuff into shapes + doing daily warmups

lemonGHOST: definitely simplifying everything into basic organic and non-organic shapes

Beats: Yeah I can see the shapes in your sketches

Moving on to the business side of things, how has your income been? No need to be specific on amount, but is it a full-time thing for you now?

lemonGHOST: I'm currently in my final semester so I'll be graduating soon, I've been consistenly working on commissions and growing my social media for a year now, once i graduate I'll be going full time

Beats: So what's your commission marketing process like? Do you just post a "commissions open" and get some comms that way, or does it flow in steadily regardless?

lemonGHOST: After growing a following, I've been able to just announce when my commissions are open and people usually come to me

Beats: That's nice, usually OC commissions?

lemonGHOST: yeap

Beats: Cool, would you say you're still challenged by commissions at this point? You've done a lot of work

lemonGHOST: for the most part not really, it's usually things im comfortable with, but I do have commercial commissions that needs more polishing than usual

Beats: I see, makes sense. What're your goals moving forward with your NSFW art?

lemonGHOST: Definitely not going too far with it as I will prioritize my SFW career, but it's definitely more of a hobby atm where I explore things I've always been always interested in

but of course on the business side, money is money, and I need it to survive so additional material to another demographic is definitely a plus

Beats: Haha, lots of horny commissioners for sure

Cool so wrapping up, any advice for artists still early in their journey?

lemonGHOST: Definitely focus on sketching more than making only a few completed artworks. You'll improve alot faster if you get the fundamentals down with sketching first

Beats: Good advice