Meet Eli Neugeboren

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eli Neugeboren. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eli below.

Eli, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

To be honest I haven’t completely gotten over it! The trickiest thing with imposter syndrome is that it is lurking around every corner sometimes. The best thing to help me deal with feeling like I don’t belong in certain situations is compartmentalizing – accepting that this is how part of me is going to feel about it, that I’m going to lack some of the self-confidence I should properly have.

And that’s the flip-side of the imposter coin, isn’t it? Confidence! I have been doing my best to internalize and accept that I DO belong, that my work really is good, and that people are going to be excited to view and interact with my work. I think teaching also helps this because seeing where my undergrads are at in their creative journey can help remind me how much work I’ve put in, and how I felt when I was in their shoes.

While working on my new graphic novel, “Whatever Happened to Frankie King” (Graphic Mundi), I was feeling not-good-enough and was comparing myself to other artists and, in my opinion, not measuring up. I expressed that to a friend who told me I need to remind myself that they hired me to draw the book – and this can be extrapolated onto all my work – they hired ME to draw this exactly because of how I draw! That really turned my attitude on itself and allowed me to accept that maybe maybe I just might be good at this.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

“Whatever Happened to Frankie King” is my first full-length graphic novel and it will be available everywhere on November 27. This book is the embodiment of a dream project – a collaboration with my author father, we are telling a story about Brooklyn, basketball, mental health, and family. Frankie King was an enigma – an NYC hoops legend who disappeared before ever playing a minute of college basketball, and who my father discovered had written 40+ mystery novels under a female pseudonym over the course of his life. Though he disappeared from public life he lived an interesting one; the writing, possibly working for John Gotti, and being something of a hobo philosopher, doling out wisdom to his family and friends.

The book is being published by Graphic Mundi (Penn State Press), and is 128 pages long. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637790775?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_9YV06QA4RC6DB5B2KQ7V_1&starsLeft=1&skipTwisterOG=1

In addition to the book I continue to work on my award-winning series I call “Drawing the News”. Drawing the News started as a warmup exercise so I wouldn’t have to think about what to draw, and now has over 2000 drawings in the series.
https://elineugeboren.com/drawingthenews

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?

1. My drafting ability – I can look at something and (most of the time) I can draw it.
2. My desire to get better – I don’t only see the flaws in my work but when I finish something it is mostly what I see. The need to learn and improve through doing the actual work has been the greatest asset I could think of.
3. My curiousity – I want to be exposed to new things and learn new things about the things I am already familiar with.

I have a Venn diagram I came up with that I show in class sometimes that is three circles: what you want to do, what you are good at, and what people will pay you to do. The overlap of those three things can be your career if you are honest with yourself about each of them. The better you get at recognizing each of them widens that overlap until it is a perfect circle.

It’s become cliche but don’t be afraid of failing: failing is where you LEARN things. Being afraid to fail means you are afraid to try and if you’re afraid to try then you’ve already failed without doing anything. And as a result of my failures I’ve come to realize that there is no wasted work: everything you do is bolstering your abilities, strengthening your muscle memory, firing your neural pathways, and when you sit back down at the table you are wiser and stronger for the next thing you attempt.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Now that I’ve finished the book and everything is off to the publisher I have some time to think about what I want to work on next, and who I want to work with next. It was a great experience designing the characters, researching the locations, and actually finishing something this big. This project was a biography so it was very much realistic in its rendering. Next, I’m hoping to be able to flex my monster muscles a bit more and draw some really far out wild scenes and creatures.

At the same time I’ve been doing a very straight-forward series of food-related paintings and would love to collaborate with a chef to make drawings and paintings for a cookbook or a project like that. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with former Global Design Lead for Nike Basketball, Dustin Canalin, creating artwork for his lifestyle sportswear brand Always Trophy Hunting. Any work like that, where there is a clear vision and my artwork is a part of that would be welcome.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Head shot should be credited to Zachary Neugeboren. All other images are mine.

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