We were lucky to catch up with Jerilyn Lee recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jerilyn, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I think that purpose is a very broad idea that can change from moment to moment. Most of the time I feel that my purpose is to simply experience life and to live presently. I think it’s important for everyone, not just creatives, to take in as much as you can in everyday living. I think it makes life move slower and creates more opportunities to discover more about yourself and those you care about. It is these moments that inspire me to create art and give my illustrations their purpose.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a freelance illustrator and designer. I tell stories and portray emotion through the imagery that I make, oftentimes unintentionally reflecting my own values and perspectives into my pieces. I think what makes illustration so special is that it tackles so many types of image making and can morph to communicate anything from an editorial piece in a magazine to creating patterns for textiles. Every job and every project feels unique and each one has its own unique solution to accompany it. I find that this makes every job exciting because I get to interact with so many talented people who teach me new things as I go along my journey. As a recent graduate from ArtCenter College of Design I have found that despite my four years of education, there is still so much more growing and learning that can be done as I navigate the professional world of illustration.
As I create more and more pieces, whether they are personal or for a specific job, I find that each one is a step closer to where I want my art and voice to be. The process of illustration is a lot of exploring different avenues and making little discoveries about who you are and how to best represent that in your art. I feel that my artistic journey directly reflects my life as a whole and each piece can be traced to a certain time. My current art style is very abstract with lots of details and flat shapes, which is completely different from what I used to create, highly rendered representational pieces. I am looking forward to seeing where my voice takes me next and to have this documentation of my life that I can look back on.
In my senior project I created a graphic novel titled “So Far,” which is a book about my life so far. It serves as a great checkpoint in my life, and marks the end of my educational career as a student. In it I reflect on my relationships with others and provide insight on what it is like to experience the world through my eyes. In total it is around 150 pages all printed on a risograph machine and hand bound with a hard cover. I hope to polish it up and attempt to publish it or enter it into upcoming illustration competitions so that I may share it with the world.
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?
Throughout my journey so far I have found that one of the most important qualities that I possess is having a wealth of passion to create and to illustrate. I would not have been able to come as far as I have without the will to continue to hone my skills and to get better at visually communicating with others. Despite the occasional burn out, my passion to draw and to make art is never fully gone during these times and always comes back after a period of rest. Beyond having passion I think another important factor to any sort of success is having grit. Everyone fails at everything which sucks a lot, but what’s most important is how you deal with it afterwards. It’s okay to feel upset about failure, but lingering on it only prevents you from future successes. Actively trying to fail at as many things as possible by applying yourself to as many things as possible can actually get you pretty far.
Something that I’ve already discussed but I think is relevant to the question is that having the ability to live in the moment is incredibly impactful. Not only does it inspire me to create art, but it helps with just my overall happiness and maintaining a healthy mindset. Being too passionate and looking too far ahead into the future can cause a lot of inaction. Likewise, being too absorbed in past failures can also leave you stagnant and unwilling to grow. Being present and being aware of your choices and actions are extremely important. The practice of mindfulness is beneficial to everyone and can be easily incorporated into daily life.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Being a new illustrator is challenging because it’s very hard to get yourself out there into the world. Beyond just making connections or applying to jobs, many of my peers and I feel a lack of confidence in ourselves despite the fact that we are more than ready to enter the illustration world. Imposter syndrome and the fear of not being good enough to make it is terrifying and is something that I am still working on trying to overcome. Thankfully I have many supportive peers and mentors that I can rely on that reassure me that I am on the right path. I am so grateful to those who have supported me on my journey thus far and I will do everything in my power to live up to their kindness.
Contact Info:
- Website: jerilynlee.com
- Instagram: @jebnart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerilyn-lee-162975234/
