Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Richards.
Mark, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I started my artistic story with drawing on the walls of my parents’ house and most likely other things I shouldn’t have been defacing. I eventually matured and upgraded to more suitable options like restaurant placemats and brown paper bag book covers in school. At some point, I learned how to use real paper like a regular human. I knew from a young age that I wanted to pursue art as a career, so I attended MassArt for two years, then graduated from UMass Dartmouth with a BFA in Illustration. Sadly I didn’t put my degree to much use for a long time and even stopped making art altogether for close to a year. As I approached the end of my 20’s, I started to take on more commissions and fell back in love with making art. For the past 5-7 years, I’ve been really pushing myself as hard as possible to get to where I feel I should be, and continue to grow as an artist. In the last year or so I’ve made a full-time career out of drawing mainly dead, drippy, gross, gruesome, creepy and crawly things, which is a dream come true. Every now and then I draw “nice” things for good measure, too.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
The majority of my work is illustration for heavy metal bands, concert posters, and horror movies. My absolute favorite media is traditional crow quill pen nibs, brushes, and acrylic ink. I also rely heavily on my iPad and Photoshop in some capacity for every project, as much as I prefer to do as much by hand as possible. I’ve been into metal and horror since I was a kid and always loved the dark, gruesome, gory, jarring imagery. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve always gravitated towards the darker side of art, but I definitely have a lot more fun drawing all sorts of weird critters and skulls than a standard portrait or landscape. I usually don’t try to convey any particular message with my art, but I do want people to see that I create it because I truly love it and put my all into it.
Artists rarely, if ever pursue art for the money. Nonetheless, we all have bills and responsibilities, and many aspiring artists are discouraged from pursuing art due to financial reasons. Any advice or thoughts you’d like to share with prospective artists?
It is a bit tough to give financial advice for artists since I’m still trying to figure it out myself! There are so many variables at play; different styles of art, markets, trends, etc. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to not undervalue your work. When I started really sinking my teeth into freelancing, I would have some clients telling me I wasn’t charging enough, but other clients would counter my commission fee by saying that “so-and-so said he can do it for 20% of that.” It’s easy to give in if you’re struggling, but it’s not worth shortchanging yourself at all. It’s also very important to have some sort of “passive income” as LA artist Dave Kloc advised me. Selling prints, stickers, buttons, t-shirts, etc. through a variety of online commerce sites usually provides a decent supplement to my commissions. Sometimes you have to front the production costs yourself, but the return can be very rewarding if you know your market. Print-on-demand services like Store Frontier, Society6, and RedBubble are also solid assets for this type of income.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
Right now the best place to see my work is on Instagram. It’s a great tool for artists and is almost solely responsible for all of my success. I post the same content on Facebook, for anyone who prefers that outlet. People can support my work by following my social media pages, and buying anything I’m putting out! Showing my work to your friends and family, recommending my services to bands/companies you want to see me do work for, sharing/tagging my work on social media, etc. also help tremendously.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shopheavyhand.com
- Email: heavyhandillustration@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/heavy.hand
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/heavyhandillustration
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/heavyhandill
- Other: www.storefrontier.com/store/heavy-hand-illustration
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