Meet Paul Granade

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

Paul, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
This is a really great question. As someone who works with a niche subject matter. Keeping my creativity alive can be a challenge.

It’s constantly finding new point of views, new painting styles, new inspiration to keep it going.

It’s funny, i’ve had inspiration come from concert lighting, a piece of furniture, the sky one day or a car that drove by. It could be something I saw while out in nature. You never know where the inspiration is going to come from. Being able to identify that you’ve seen something that inspires your creativity and channeling it to create something.

I always try to pay attention to my surroundings. you never know when that next inspiration is going to pop up and push your creative side in one direction or another.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I have a tendency to be a little long winded when it comes to stuff like this.

But, I will do my best to “long story short” it. I will fail miserably, but… at least I tried, right?

As early as I can remember, I have loved the arts. All kinds of art… Music, film, photography, paintings, mixed media, all of it.

As a kid all the way throughout high school I was always drawing something. It could have been a logo for a friend’s band, or just doodles and even a poor attempt at writing and drawing a comic book (which was a goal for a long time).

Over the years and with no formal education outside of whatever art class i was taking in school. I kept trying to grow more with my art, but never taking it overly serious. As I watched incredibly talented friends who had far more of an aptitude for art than I did. I came to the realization that i wasn’t very good at it. I tried to move to music which unfortunately i didn’t have the aptitude for either.

I have always been more of a math and science brain. So, after a while, i just sort of stopped and started focusing on things that I felt i had more of a natural ability at.

Sports and academics filled my teenage years and the idea of creating sort of just moved to the back of the line.

As I got older, I focused on a career and making enough money to be comfortable, that became the goal…There was always something nagging at me to create. I shook it off constantly. Occasionally, I would buy sketch books or draw a funny cartoon to make my friends laugh, but overall it was not something I regularly doing.

If I ever created anything. it was solely for myself. something I wanted in my home or on the wall.

We will let that take us to September 2021. I was wandering around a store and looking at some halloween decorations. Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays so I am always adding to my collection. I came across some inexpensive hollow plastic skulls. I kept looking at them and thought the shape was pretty realistic but the paint job was terrible. So, I decided I was going to paint them. Something simple, one black and one orange. After I finished spray painting them I thought they looked a lot better, but still missing something. I had seen a lot of this “poured paint” paint style recently and while i thought it was okay on a canvas. I thought doing it on something that has shape could be fun. So, i gave it a go. With orange one i kept it really simple, black and more orange. it came out very orange marble. With the black one I went nuts and used every color I had until it had the right combo.

As they dried and as I cleaned up the giant mess I had made, they took shape. after a couple days I looked at them again and still really liked how they came out, The main thing was, I wanted to paint more. I had a lot of different ideas on how to paint other ones.

I reached out to a friend of mine whom I always looked up to as a mentor and a big brother (Chris Hamer, Urbnpop) and asked him about his thoughts and if there was a potential market for it. He suggested I find out. He was putting together a comic con the next month and said he would put me in artist alley if I made a bunch more and brought them out. I cautiously agreed.

I started a instagram page, bought a bunch of stuff to photograph my work and a bunch of stuff to display it at this comic-con. i’m a few hundred bucks in the hole and have no idea if I will even connect with anyone.

Here i am, almost 40 years old, at a comic con with some amazing artists who have been doing this a long time. There are no words that can describe vulnerability I felt that day. I felt totally exposed. I took 24 skulls to that comic con and sold 18. I was absolutely floored by the response I got.

When I got home from the con I decided I wanted to give this a go. I wasn’t planning to stop my day job, but I found it helped me tremendously with managing my stress from the day to day grind.

Over the next several months I would go to art markets, gain a decent amount of attention, sell some skulls and go back and make more. I had a fair amount of people who wanted to commission work. I would work some local casting houses and different distributors to get some different types of skulls large full-size resins, some scaled medical models, all trying to find what i prefer to work with.

I tried different paint styles , I started painting canvases offered some prints. eventually made some T shirts(huge goal of mine) and got creative with some 3D wall art as not every one has room on their bookshelf or coffee table for a full sized human skull replica. it’s In October of 23 Brightest Black celebrated its second anniversary, which blows my mind.

My medium is unique. when you go to art markets, you don’t see other things like mine. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, and I haven’t always had the success that i had at my first few markets. but I still love working with it every day.

I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve created. I’m incredibly happy that people seem to enjoy what I am doing and it’s really surreal to think about all the people that have something i created sitting in their homes.

I am now a partner with Chris Hamer of Urbnpop for our semi-monthly art market called Drawn and Disorderly. Drawn and Disorderly also has a permanent gallery featuring local and regional artists over at Mutation Brewing in Sandy Springs.

It’s so wild to me how all this has happened so quickly.

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?
This is another good question.

Since I am not formally educated in the arts, there has been a lot of trial and error along the way. Being able to identify that something is or is not working.

I also am good at pushing myself out of my comfort zone. This has been critical to my growth

Despite not having any formal education in the arts i have a good eye for color theory. which has helped me tremendously not getting stuck in a rut or a particular look.

as far as advice? I am not sure my skills or qualities will really help someone on their journey, but the advice I will provide is… Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. You will be amazed on how easily it is to find people that connect with what you do. Just be honest with your work, do it for the right reasons and the people will find you.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
This question hits home. My biggest challenge is exposure. With the day and age we live in. People’s attention spans are short. Trying to gain exposure to your audience or even just any audience is tough. On top of being an artist, you have to be a content creator. You need to be creative. It’s not as simple as starting a website or an Etsy page and watching the orders flood in. You have to separate yourself from the others and catch peoples attention. I am constantly trying to gain followers on Social Media and get more attention and eyes on my work.

The best way to overcome this is to just post. Post something regularly. I don’t have the time to do it everyday. but I make a point to post regularly. There are some weeks I am just not feeling it, and I may not post for a week or so, but just try to post. Keep your page on peoples feeds. Pay attention to the trends and try to get as many eyes as possible on your stuff.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Brightest Black

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