Today, we’d like to introduce you to Lori Mitchell.
Hi Lori, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw or create. My mom was always taking my sisters and me to museums, art happenings and street fairs. I would come home from school and find mom throwing a pot on her potter’s wheel or throwing paint on a canvas in the backyard. Creativity just felt like second nature to me. All through school, I was known as an artistic person, I got all the awards and was voted most artistic in high school.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my art in terms of a career, but I remember I always managed to earn extra money by creating logos or doing drawings. I also had a freelance job doing illustrations for the Stockton Record newspaper while I was in college. I was encouraged by my art teacher to go to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. This experience accelerated my learning, and I got to meet so many creative people who inspired me to make art my career.
When I graduated, I did all kinds of jobs, from drawing toilet parts to illustrating my first book. I wrote and illustrated the book Different Just Like Me. I went on to illustrate 9 more books in between doing advertising and editorial illustrations. Currently, I am teaching “Playing with Pen and Watercolor” via ZOOM for the Athenaeum Music and Art Library.
Recently, I have been doing more paintings that have been shown at the San Diego Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor Society, and The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolor. I have also been doing public murals.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I have had my ups and downs, but it feels like I always had opportunities present themselves where I could use my creativity. I managed to get through the Art Center College of Design by working several jobs and taking off two terms to work freelance.
I worked as a book designer and drew houses in the beautiful Pasadena neighborhood surrounding the college. Once I graduated, I did illustrations for a variety of magazines, newspapers, and publishers. Fresh out of college, I remember taking my portfolio around San Francisco with my best friend and fellow Art Center graduate, Patricia Doctor. We were on a shoestring budget for the weekend and ended up sleeping on the floor of a friend of my sisters. He didn’t even know us.
I still remember all the walking and how my new red “business shoes” were making my heels bleed, but it was also such an adventure, and we stayed out and talked about art almost all night over some very cheap beer in a dive bar in Chinatown. So, even in the tough times, there was good to be found and savored.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I do pen and watercolor. My favorite thing to do is sketch people and dogs in coffee shops. You can find most of my sketches on my Instagram page. The weekend sketches are mostly just for my own entertainment, but I have sold many of them. You can also find them at the Flower Pot Cafe in La Jolla on permanent installation.
The thing I am probably most known for is the book that I wrote and illustrated called “Different Just Like Me.” I have done 10 books all together, but this one is the one that I am most proud of because I made it originally for my daughter, who has vitiligo. It led to me giving presentations at schools about diversity and acceptance, and I also got to be on the Oprah Show.
I got to go to Chicago to be on the show, and they put me up at the Omni Hotel. I was so nervous I didn’t sleep the whole night before. The subject for the show was “Gratitude,” and boy, was I grateful to be there. My book stayed on her website under the recommended books section for about 8 years.
Recently, I was commissioned to create a couple of murals. They started as small watercolor paintings and then they were blown up, one was 20 feet tall. It was really exciting to see my artwork at Warwick’s, the oldest bookstore in the United States. My second mural was installed on the new fire station in Otay Mesa, just at the border between San Diego and Baja.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a creative kid. I was the youngest of three girls. We were all one year apart. I was quiet and shy, and I was perfectly happy to just sit and quietly draw all day. I wasn’t a loner, though; I had imaginative friends, so we could all be creative together. I remember one friend coming over when we were about 8 years old, and we decided to make a TV.
We created the TV out of a big box and then put a paper roll on two dowels. The “channel changer” would roll the paper so you could see the next show or TV commercial that we painstakingly drew each frame of on the roll of paper. In school, Mr. Timmons, my 6th grade history teacher, realized I learned visually, so he gave me the task of creating his bulletin board to show the Civil War.
I learned so much because I had to research it all and even researched their uniforms to get them looking just right. I had to answer all the big questions about the war: where, when, what, and how, to be able to draw it all accurately. I got so much more out of it than I had just read.
Pricing:
- Please contact me for a free quote.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lorimitchellart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorimitchellart/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lori-mitchell-b399bb12/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-yRknAPrAM
- Other: https://www.differentjustlikeme.com/
Image Credits
Dan Dredla and art image Lori Mitchell
