I have counted Emily Johnson among my friends practically since I joined Twitter in 2019. She’s an illustrator, writer of historical fiction, farm girl, and generally a charming young lady. It’s been a pleasure to make her acquaintance.
She recently did me the favor of answering some of my burning questions, which you can now read below.
Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Where do you live now? What did you want to be when you grew up?
I’m from the Northwoods of Wisconsin—and always have been! I grew up on my family’s beautiful horse farm, where inspiration for artwork was never lacking. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be an artist of some variety or another (pottery was a big-deal interest for me at one time), though there was a short time I considered becoming a veterinarian. I also studied interior design for two years!
What sort of artwork do you do? What’s your main medium?
A shorter answer might be what sort of artwork I don’t do! But I mainly focus on illustration, both children’s books and graphic novels. I usually work digitally, either in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint, but I love using traditional media too—I really enjoy watercolors, I do hand lettering, not to mention sewing and a ton of needle arts like knitting, crocheting, needle felting, embroidery, etc.
How/where did you learn your skills?
When I was a little girl, I used to mimic illustrations out of books, even though it sort of felt like ‘cheating’ at the time (the Old Masters would certainly disagree!)
My grandmother was an artist for most of her life (she was still making art well into her 90s!) and she taught me so, so much. We would spend entire afternoons sitting around a table full of art supplies, just making things. She always made sure I had plenty of supplies and art books on hand!
I took an art course in high school that really gave my skills a boost, and then after high school I just did as many online art courses as I could find. One I really enjoyed was the Character Design course from Creature Art Teacher, I can’t recommend that one enough!
What made you want to start making art? What motivates you to keep it up?
I can’t really remember what made me want to start, because I’ve always been doing it. There’s still a wall in my parents’ basement covered with dozens of horse drawings I did as a kid. As for the motivation, I just get so much joy out of creating things. I’m happiest when my hands are busy drawing, or painting, or crafting, or sewing. It’s just a wonderful feeling.
Where do you get your inspiration?
The cliché answer is “everywhere”, but that’s really true for me! I see things I think are beautiful, or interesting, or unique, and immediately I want to incorporate them into my art in some way. A lot of the art I do for myself is art for my graphic novels, so a lot of my inspiration comes from the stories I’m writing. I want to get the images in my head onto paper.
Who are your favorite artists?
My favorite artist from the annals of art history would have to be Vermeer. There’s just something about his work that speaks to me—maybe it’s the homeyness of it, the depictions of people doing such ordinary, everyday things and making it so beautiful.
As a huge fan of animation, I’ve always been really inspired by animators and concept designers like Glen Keane, Aaron Blaise, and Mary Blair, and of course Hayao Miyazaki. There’s one artist, Jin Kim, who works with several animation studios and his character design work in particular is just amazing.
Where do you like to show your artwork?
You can find me at @LifeMoreSweet on Twitter and @thislifemoresweet on Instagram!
What is your favorite piece? Tell us a bit about it.
One of my favorite pieces is this image of a jingle dress dancer that I did back at the beginning of the pandemic. I was inspired by seeing so many videos of other Native women doing this dance at the time as a way to pray for healing, and I thought to myself, “Well, I can’t dance, but I can draw”, so this was my little contribution to that. I’m just pleased with every part of it—the dress, the pose, the bouncing jingles—it’s a piece I’m very proud of.
Do you have any advice for other artists?
I find Pinterest to be super useful for reference material. Whenever I see artwork that appeals to me, I pin it to one of my graphic novel inspiration boards. Then once I’ve collected a lot of artwork, I look through it all and see if I can figure out the common denominators that are appealing to me. Is it a particular art style, or way of doing line art, or a color scheme? It helps so much in defining the concepts and techniques I want to explore in my projects.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
Thanks so much for the fun questions! :) And be sure to check out the children’s book series I’m illustrating: Liam Kingbird’s Kingdom, an early reader series from Capstone!
And thank you, Emily, for taking the time to answer these questions.
I encourage all my readers to follow her on Twitter and Instagram. She’s a good person to know.