Meet Eben Schumacher

We were lucky to catch up with Eben Schumacher recently and have shared our conversation below.

Eben, 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?

For me creativity is something I discovered as a kid in moments when I needed to shut out the world. When being alive and conscious became too chaotic or painful to process, and I could simply escape onto a blank page and let my imagination take over.

This is the foundation for creativity—a safe space for exploration, an untouchable realm of limitless possibilities.

Truly, this has become more challenging than ever in today’s world. And having a career in the arts means that creativity is always tied to some degree to income and survival, which can threaten the core of what makes it special and valuable.

But truthfully, having a career in the arts has enabled me to explore my craft even more deeply, and given me the extra push to discover and experience things through my art that I would never have otherwise. If I encounter creative blocks, or I am stressed by the prospect of trying to make a living from my craft, I try to guide myself back to that space I experienced as a child, where the world melted away and it was simply me and the blank page.

If you are struggling to find creativity, think about the circumstances where you discovered your passion. For me, it was a blank piece of paper, some pencils, maybe an audiobook playing in the background. It was sunlight streaming through a classroom window, the silence between scratches on paper, the soft ticking of a clock. That moment when I considered what I was supposed to be doing and what I really wanted to be doing and made a decision to lose myself in my art.

Now, if I feel like I’m losing touch with this, I try to simplify as much as possible. Throw away the digital tools, find the most basic form of your art. Get out the paper and pencils, or finger paints, or typewriter, whatever it is. Put yourself in a simple environment, a coffee shop or outside on a porch if you have one. Somewhere clean and spacious. Get out in nature, or wherever it is you feel safe.

Turn off all the devices, or if you must, all but the one that you need to listen to an audiobook or favorite song. For me if I listen to something it’s usually something I’ve listened to a thousand times, so it doesn’t demand my attention.

Remind yourself that your art is something nobody can take from you. Even if you’re not the best at it, or you can’t make money from it, or there’s someone or something out there that can create things that you never could. Even if you are poor and have nothing and nobody, you can still find some form of peace, some kind of small escape in your creative world.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Currently, I work full time as a concept artist for a game company, after working as a freelance illustrator for many years. It’s been a fascinating exploration using a combination of digital and traditional tools, and I’ve learned an incredible amount in the past year about art and design.

Although games and similar digital media have the potential to pull us away from life and demand our attention, there is a tremendous amount of incredible artwork and passion that goes into these products, and I believe there is a way to create an experience that is both transportive and responsible with the consumer’s attention.

In addition to 2D concepting, I have been exploring the incredible world of 3D art and modeling for animation (and even a little bit of animation itself). Each medium I explore simply brings new ideas and new perspectives to my other work. And still often I will have days where I just have a sketchbook and some pencils and am letting the ideas flow slowly and peacefully without the intricate maze of technical hurdles that can often accompany digital media.

For now, this occupies most of my day-to-day, but I also try to spread the word and speak up when and where I can about the value of protecting and keeping human creativity in the world and in the work force. I would like to direct people to platforms such as Artgram and Cara, which are providing artist-first alternatives to social media platforms like Instagram and Artstation, and organizations like the Concept Art Association which share this commitment to supporting human creativity and the arts.

It is imperative that art and creativity remain an active dialogue and process between creative people, and not simply an algorithmic regurgitation of creative products. I encourage any reader to please continue to pursue your craft and/or find a way to support those who are continuing to pursue theirs.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Critical thinking and deep examination of social standards. I would not be where I am if I blindly followed conventions. While this can be isolating and alienating at times, it’s certainly interesting and can lead to success in unexpected ways. Deeply investigate everything, and ask yourself if it’s valuable. Take the risk of standing out or losing something if it feels right to you. Always strive to find something greater. Love, admiration, and acceptance are fickle and fleeting. Art is a constant.

2. Become comfortable with confusion and uncertainty, but be curious. Life is confusing, and we operate in a limited worldview. Accepting this, and being able to consider things from multiple angles can be paralyzing, but it frees us to explore areas of life that don’t require “capital T truth”, and allows us to keep one foot in the larger picture. I love art, math, and music, because they don’t require objective truth. It’s just a playground for the mind. I can argue emphatically about exactly how one design is better than another, and just as easily let go and accept that my perspective is limited. And yet the process of investigation is still rewarding.

3. Work with your mind, not against it. If you’re anything like me, you know that the mind and emotions are a wild horse loose in a hospital. Moments of clarity and control are few and far between, gasps of air between waves. Learn to use those brief moments to create circumstances that will guide your mind when you have less control. Shape your environment, leave notes for yourself, engineer your surroundings to make the things you want to do easier and the things you don’t want to do harder. Write down a plan, and then later take a moment to reflect on how it went (spoiler alert, it probably didn’t work out the way you hoped it would). Recalibrate, then try again.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

I have been learning to trust my gut when it comes to design, but more broadly, when it comes to learning new skills. I think for many years I have defaulted to modesty when it comes to an area that’s a little outside of my comfort zone. But shifting from this to a more curious mindset has allowed me to make massive strides in my artwork, and explore unexpected areas of life.

For example, I never considered working in a more stylized art form to be something I would be good at, but I’ve had to take a deep dive into that for my current job. After some trials and hurdles, I began to understand the underlying principles, which are actually just the underlying principles of design in general, just simplified and refined. I was then able to carry this knowledge with me when returning to more grounded, realistic artwork, and it’s improved all of my work immensely.

I also feared that more technical art forms like 3D modeling or animation were beyond my comprehension and ability (I’ve always been a bit more traditional with my art, and like to keep things simple). But in fact, having a more cerebral technical challenge to accompany the creative side of things has been incredibly rewarding, and almost a relief at times. Often the creative mind takes a rest and allows the problem solving mind to kick into full gear, and having the two work together makes for a very immersive experience. And learning how to think about designs in 3D has helped my 2D work as well.

The point being that I was limiting myself by deciding what I was and wasn’t good at before I tried it. I love testing my mind and creativity in all kinds of different ways, through writing, music, design, math, whatever it is, but it’s easy to but yourself in a box and think “I am just an X, I don’t know how to Y”. I look forward to pushing this further in the coming years, beyond simply different experimenting with different visual art forms.

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Image Credits

All images copyright Eben Schumacher Art 2024.

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