Meet Andrew Edwards

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

Andrew, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Creativity is a muscle I have to continue to flex! You’d think juggling social media marketing, storyboarding, and comics would make it easier to switch gears and keep things fresh but they all draw from a similar reservoir of energy. So, I’ve deliberately restructured my time this past six months to accommodate keeping my creativity alive.

For me, it takes a precarious balance of routine effort, novel experiences, and finding peer groups where we recharge one another. Luckily I live in Los Angeles there’s never not a weekend where something shiny and new is happening. Every week I allocate three days to enriching studies or art events. Whether tabling events or museum trips, this exposes me to unique voices and approaches to art making I can experiment with in my work. From the fruits of that experimentation, I lean into what excites me and compels me to tell more stories. Art can be a very insular creative experience but my preferred mediums, social media, storyboarding, and comics, are always dialogues! They necessitate I maintain entry points for an audience. This is where peers are invaluable! Friends who understand me, my goals, and the space separating the two, help me refine my creative work. Again, living in LA means there’s an immense pool of inspiring artists and I’m incredibly thankful for the artists I’ve befriended here.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Sure! I’m Andrew Edwards, an Afro-Latinx creator who is always undertaking new marketing and animation projects. I’ve been putting a lot of effort towards personal art too. Recently I’ve launched a Webtoon comic called “Part-Time Angel.” I’ve just released my 10th episode and it’s been exciting to see such personal stories resonating with others.

Last year I won the Negative Space Short Comics Competition and won some one-on-one mentoring from founders Nahuel Fanjul-Arguijo and Alex Dvorak. One big takeaway was that I wasn’t actively building a body of work! I’d eke out small works here and there but was lacking mileage. I think my main hurdle for personal work was my indecision. Marketing and Storyboarding projects I’ve undertaken are specific in genre, tone, age group, etc. For comics, that same approach was causing me to freeze. Once I decided I was my own target audience, I felt so much more liberty to chase scenes that specifically pulled at my heartstrings and made me laugh.

Comics have been immensely refreshing and I’ve loved seeing how making personal art strengthened my voice and led to stronger decisions in my other creative work. I encourage everyone to find an art form that can be just for them!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
For anyone trying to develop their art, I cannot stress enough that you find your personal balance in the following three areas: Setting, Pacing, and Community.

My setting determines my outcomes. I get distracted ten times more when working with a screen in front of me, so in-person observational drawings with physical media are best for me! Some days I just don’t have the dopamine to be on task, so I make sure my environment sets me up for success by distancing myself from distracting noise, sounds, and tasks. I typically try to focus on a study for two hours after warming up, and when I get in a good groove I ride the interest for as long as it’ll take me. Experiment with different settings and see which aids you best in meaningful, focused study.

It’s easy to be impatient with your progress. Mileage is key to improvement but if I never find the “groove” I’m looking for, I’ll try and assess why but I won’t beat myself up for it! Pacing out that mileage with time for reflection and intention will improve any art practice. Also, I’m sure most artists relate to having work competing for their time and energy. To protect myself from burnout, I try to draw every day that my day job *doesn’t* challenge me creatively. I am always willing to scale my prompts and assignments according to what I have in the tank that day.

When my tank is empty, my community is a foolproof way to refill it. I try to study with friends or befriend those I meet at public art events. It’s always fun trading tips and hyping each other up! Contrasting how others analyze, push, or simplify the same subjects as me inspires me to borrow their perspectives and methods. I take specific note of what I admire about other artists and that fuels deliberate, specific prompts that help me gauge my growth more readily. Just talking amongst like-minded peers is an invaluable reminder that artists of all skill levels still study and even effortless-looking artwork has hours of invisible labor behind it.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
On my journey, I’ve done a lot of internal work finding roadblocks, identifying intrinsic interests, and building systems for myself that keep me enthusiastic about my work. That doesn’t mean there aren’t macro-level anxieties weighing on me. It’s been hard to be online as an animator. An online presence is essentially mandatory yet subjects you to an onslaught of news about lay-offs, art theft in datasets for machine learning, and shrinking resources for independent projects. For over a year there’s been a snowballing narrative that human expression and creativity aren’t valuable to big players.

I won’t pretend to have an easy three-part solution to these problems. I will, however, bring the focus back to finding community. I constantly consider myself lucky to be where I am in my career, even as precarious as it is, because of those around me. It makes a world of difference to voice anxieties and be told, “No, you’re not crazy,” or “Yes, I’m seeing the consequences too.” I admire the self-dependence I’ve cultivated, and how it leaves room to still reach out for help, relief, education, and direction. My exposure to artist discords, mutual aid efforts, and union organizers especially has been integral to turning my anxiety into actionable steps.

I would encourage any overwhelmed artist reading along to dedicate time to trading in doom-scrolling for communing with like-minded peers that help you find hope in the darkness too!

Contact Info:

Image Credits
“VideoCapture_EXCERPT-IAmSoilBreakingOff-EnglishCC.jpg” “I Am Soil Breaking Off” Poem and Translation by Paloma Sierra, Animated by Andrew Edwards

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