Interview: Lisa Perrin Talks Going from Analog to Digital and into a Thriving Career

I’ve known Lisa Per­rin for a long time. We met in grad­u­ate school near­ly sev­en years ago and have been pals ever since; see­ing Lisa’s work devel­op over that many years has been incred­i­ble. She went from not know­ing how to use a Wacom tablet to grow­ing her skills and land­ing a job as an in-house illus­tra­tor for Amer­i­can Greet­ings. Dur­ing this time, she estab­lished and has main­tained a thriv­ing free­lance career; you’ll find her work on the likes of book cov­ers and as the iden­ti­ty for the 2018 Macy’s Flower Show.

Lisa is about to make anoth­er big life change. In August, she’ll be return­ing to MICA, our alma mater, as a full-time pro­fes­sor in the under­grad Illus­tra­tion depart­ment. I spoke with her about this, along with advice for oth­er illus­tra­tors. Read it in the inter­view below and be sure to fol­low Lisa on Insta­gram.

How do you gen­er­ate ideas for your work?

I wait for a hum­ming­bird to soft­ly whis­per ideas into my ear. Just kid­ding! Its a lot less mag­i­cal, and a lot more nerdy/ cere­bral. Hon­est­ly, I just do a whole lot of think­ing before I even start sketch­ing. I write notes to myself. I reg­u­lar­ly look at things I love, that inspire me. I gath­er ref­er­ence images and com­pile them on my expan­sive Pin­ter­est boards. I have nev­er been good about keep­ing a sketch­book. Instead, I have a bag filled with all my draw­ings and notes from the last 5 years. Its a poor sys­tem, but it works in a pinch!

What was it like to tran­si­tion from using ana­log mate­ri­als to an all-dig­i­tal process? 

For me, the dis­cov­ery of dig­i­tal tools was the ‘aha’ moment I was wait­ing for! Work­ing in lay­ers in Adobe Pho­to­shop real­ly jives with how my brain works. I was late to the dig­i­tal par­ty. Its embar­rass­ing to say now, but when I got to grad­u­ate school I knew peo­ple were mak­ing art in the com­put­er, but I had no idea how! I had nev­er seen a Wacom tablet before. My [under­grad] col­lege did­n’t have an illus­tra­tion pro­gram, so my degree is in Fine Art Draw­ing and Painting.

How did hav­ing knowl­edge of paint­ing and draw­ing on paper help (or hin­der!) your learn­ing to illus­trate on the computer?

I am very grate­ful that I learned the fun­da­men­tals of col­or and design using tra­di­tion­al media. I still think tra­di­tion­al is the best way to start your art edu­ca­tion. You can progress to work­ing dig­i­tal­ly when you under­stand all those ana­log tools and design concepts.

You are on the tail-end of work­ing as an in-house illus­tra­tor for Amer­i­can Greet­ings. What was it like work­ing in-house? How did that affect your free­lance career? 

I have worked in-house with Amer­i­can Greet­ings for almost 5 years now, and it has been a real­ly valu­able edu­ca­tion in a lot of ways! It was a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse inside how com­pa­nies work, why they make the deci­sions that they do, and how mar­kets oper­ate and change. I have tru­ly loved work­ing in a stu­dio with oth­er artists every day! I also had to learn to deal with chal­lenges, like being asked to cre­ate illus­tra­tions in any style. There were also the same issues you run into as a free­lancer, like man­ag­ing dead­lines, and han­dling changes from the client. I would work in my cubi­cle at AG for 8 hours, then go home and work on my per­son­al free­lance illus­tra­tion. It could be over­whelm­ing and be drain­ing at times. The hard­est part is fig­ur­ing out the work/life balance.

Do you have any advice for those want­i­ng to be an in-house illustrator?

Any­one inter­est­ed in a career as an in-house illus­tra­tor should work on devel­op­ing a port­fo­lio that shows a wide range of skill sets and styles. Ver­sa­til­i­ty is a real­ly desir­able thing to com­pa­nies! I know for me, right out of school, I still want­ed the struc­ture of hav­ing a place to go every day, the cama­raderie or cowork­ers, and the sta­bil­i­ty of a salary. But I would get burned out from time to time try­ing to do free­lance on top of that. There are trade-offs to every­thing. But know­ing what your needs and expec­ta­tions are is always valu­able when nav­i­gat­ing your career path!

What is a skill that you still want to learn in your illus­tra­tion career? 

There is a tru­ly over­whelm­ing amount of things I want to learn! Late­ly, I real­ly want to learn to make gifs, real­ly weird ani­mat­ed gifs. I also real­ly want to cre­ate a sur­face design and pat­tern port­fo­lio and explore that part of the indus­try more. I am also tran­si­tion­ing into being a full-time pro­fes­sor, and I hope to learn more about teach­ing and ped­a­gogy. The art of actu­al­ly being helpful!

I think a real­ly nifty thing about the illus­tra­tion world right now is that there are a lot of ways you can be an illus­tra­tor and apply illus­tra­tion with­in dif­fer­ent fields. The mar­kets are chang­ing rapid­ly and the more you can do, the more kinds of jobs you can get!

What piece of advice, habit, or tool has helped you the most in your career?

I’m gonna throw out a bunch!

Be nice to your­self. You can­not be an art machine all the time. You have to be a per­son too. Beware the demon of com­par­i­son. Make the art you like and want to see in the world. Nev­er respond to emails while you feel grumpy. Sleep on big deci­sions. Sleep in gen­er­al. Cher­ish your peers whose opin­ions you trust. Social Media is real­ly impor­tant. You have to be your own advo­cate. Its OK to say ‘no’ to things. Stay true to what makes you unique!