Meet Micah Amaro

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

Micah, 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?

I feel like being a creative person it’s always hard to keep finding the inspiration to create. I’ve had so many moments of not creating anything because I just don’t know what to do. What usually helps me is taking a step back and doing something else. Like reading, catching up on shows I haven’t watched yet, going outside and keeping my mind off of ‘I have to create something’. The inspiration comes back at random moments. Like listening to a song and I think ‘Oh this is how I envision this lyric’ or reading/watching something and I’m like ‘Oh I think this character would look like this or I like how they styled this character in this show, I want to draw something for this.’ I think it helps me to not try and force the creativeness to happen and let small moments inspire me.

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

I’ve always loved drawing and art as a kid. My mom would sketch and I would copy her sketches. Then it branched out to drawing my favorite cartoon characters to creating original characters I thought would fit into those shows. Growing up I was always sure I would be an artist and pursue and art career, I just changed my mind multiple times on what exactly I would do. I went from wanting to be a fashion designer, to animation, to working on video games. I had the opportunities to explore all those paths and ending up just thinking, ‘I can truthfully do whatever I want with my art.’ So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 6 years. Primarily started with traditional drawings with pen, colored pencils and graphite and then I started exploring digital art and fell in love making that my main medium. I also picked up painting again a bit after creating a social media presence. My art is very colorful and expressive. My characters I illustrate are mostly Bipoc because as a person of color myself I want to create the representation I barely had growing up. So creating characters and doing potraits is my main form of art. Now I’m doing printmaking, working with clay to make 3D sculptures, and learning how to make dolls out of my original characters. So at this point I just call myself a Mixed Media Artist since I’m always finding a new medium to explore. Currently working on my dolls and a comic/novel project that I am excited to share soon.

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?

It’s always a learning experience that doesn’t end. I’m constantly finding new ways to create and navigate a career as an artist. Truthfully I don’t think you need any specific skills or prior knowledge to pursue your creativity. It depends on how a person wants to go about it. I didn’t have a set path I wanted to take when I first started, I just knew I could make art and I wanted to be able to share that. Finding a community of creative has definitely helped me alot on my journey and I’m forever grateful for them. My best advice would be to think about what you want to do with the skills you have now and start giving yourself small goals to hit. Don’t stress yourself out and do things at your own pace.

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

I would have to say taking my time on projects and creating. I use to stress myself out all the time that if I didn’t create something to post 5 times a week I wasn’t doing enough. I found myself creating to just have something to put out but I honestly didn’t like what I was making. When I started learning printmaking, it’s such a beautifully time consuming medium that forces you to slow down and not rush, that’s when I told myself ‘You need to apply this to everything you create’ So the past 12 months, even though I’m not cranking out illustrations all the time and not posting on social media as much as I used to. I am creating things I love and I’m very proud of. And I’m less stressed out!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @amaroart96