“Be mindful of what you consume visually every day.”: Monica Ahanonu, Catapult Artist for April 2020

Monica Ahanonu’s art is a—in one word—feast. The bright colors, unexpected combinations, and striking shapes were an exciting breath of fresh air to have in Catapult magazine for the month of April. It was great fun to work with a portrait artist ready to illustrate some wonderfully colorful characters in our essays and stories in equally vibrant hues on the digital canvas.

In our interview with Monica, we learned about her art background, how she manages creativity during our Covid-19 crisis, and the value of diversifying your community by age as well as race. Thanks for your collaboration, Monica!

The Editors: When did you know you wanted to become an artist?

Monica Ahanonu: For me, being an artist, the way I am currently, wasn’t something that came early in life. One thing that has always stuck out to me are words a classmate had said to me in the sixth grade. I spent the entire class period drawing a children’s book. Afterward, I read it to her. While laughing out loud at my wild drawings, she said, “I swear, when you get older you’re going to be doing this for a living.”

That wasn’t the moment that I realized I would be an artist, but it has always been something I think is interesting. She saw how passionate I was and, perhaps, skilled in the craft before I even realized it. I really didn’t think I was meant to be an artist until my junior year of college.

What has the path looked like to get where you are now?

Growing up, I knew I wanted to work in a creative environment, but my first creative interests were in the world of photography. For many years, I thought that was what I was going to do. During the summer between eighth and ninth grade, I had surgery on both of my feet. I had to sit around for two months while I was in a wheelchair. This was a big change from my normal active lifestyle—training in gymnastics for four hours every day.

During that time of my injury, I started to explore other things I could do with my always moving, creative mind. I would take photos then transfer them onto the computer so that I could edit and add graphics. My goal was to make my graphics look like things you saw on the Disney Channel. I taught myself how to use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, and would animate gymnastics routines because I was unable to do them at the time.

By the time I entered high school, I continued to edit photos and create graphics on my computer in my spare time. When it came time to apply to colleges, I sent the graphics and animations that I had created to various schools not thinking that I would be accepted—I hadn’t taken any art classes in high school—but my mom was so encouraging and pushed me to apply anyway. After I was accepted to various art programs, I realized this may be something that I could fully pursue!

That's fantastic! What was school like?

For a long time, I thought that my acceptance to the USC Program was a mistake. I felt I was so far behind my peers, as they all had such strong drawing skills when they arrived. Long story short, I realized I had some talent with color and design after meeting with various artists at DreamWorks Animation.

While I was an intern, I received a lot of positive reactions to my illustrations and color combinations that I thought were things that everyone naturally understood how to do. This really helped me fully believe that my interests in becoming an artist professionally were valid and possible.

After a few years at DreamWorks Animation, I began to notice that I had a lot of interests outside of the feature animation world and decided to take the leap to freelance in April 2017. While I was working at the studio, I would frequently post my work on Instagram. Doing this allowed companies outside of the animation industry to take notice of me, which allowed me to land jobs once I decided to go out on my own.

Can you tell us a bit about your process?

I do all of my work digitally. I used the pen tool in Adobe Photoshop to build up the artwork that I do with shapes of various sizes and colors. I typically start with the larger shapes of an illustration to figure out my composition, then I go into the details and add in smaller and smaller shapes until the piece is at the place where I feel it represents what I am trying to show the viewer.

In our collaboration, you mentioned that portraiture is one of your favorite things to do as an artist. Why that form?

I’m drawn to portraiture because I love capturing the unique beauty of different types of people. I find it so interesting to see the many tiny details that make up someone's face which allow you to recognize them as who they are separately from someone else who may look very similar.

I also feel like a lot of people don’t feel that they are beautiful if they don’t look like those around them, so I try and represent many types of beauty to show that everyone is beautiful in their own way and how exciting it is to see the many faces that make up our world.

What advice would you give emerging illustrators trying to make a career in art?

1. Send a lot of emails and do informational interviews. Reach out to people you admire, would like to work with or are interested in learning from. Find mentors for the different areas of your life.

2. Meet everyone and don’t ever refuse a meeting. Pick their brains. You can learn so much from the people you meet even if they aren’t in your industry. Successful people always have something to offer you in some area of your life.

3. Use a planner or calendar and make lists. This allows you to see the gaps in your schedule where you can fit time to work on your side hustle and passions outside of school or a full-time job.

4. Know your industry. Research the industry you want to get into: the steps it takes to get a job in that industry, the specific job(s) you want in that industry. Research what the day-to-day is like for someone doing the job you want and see if that's a day-to-day lifestyle you would enjoy.

5. Keep yourself motivated by putting up quotes and affirmations around your living space or reminders in your phone that keeps you in a positive mindset throughout your day.

6. Diversify your friends not just by race, but by age. You learn so much from people that have either gone through what you are going through or younger people who may be more knowledgeable about specific new technologies or trends taking off.

7. Be mindful of what you consume visually every day. Follow people and things on social media that inspire you and motivate you. If you feel something isn't serving you mentally or lifting you up mentally, just hit that unfollow button.

8. Do what makes you excited, do what you are excited about and interested in that very moment and if that interest changes, that’s okay. If you are really passionate about something, you will focus on it and become very good at it faster than something you are forcing yourself to do.

Love what you said about diversifying your community along lines of age as well as race. How have you found community within the art world?

Instagram and Soho House have been two places where I have been able to find a great community within the art world. I love Instagram in that I can connect with other artists all around the world and we can support each other as well as inspire each other as we create new work and go through the challenges of developing new ideas and visuals as an artist.

Soho House is a community where I am surrounded by artists in so many fields as well and often from other areas of the world. I love that Soho House members travel so much so you are always learning about things going on in other industries in other cities within the US as well as across the ocean on another continent. Everyone is very passionate about what they do whatever field they are in and a majority of the members are in some form of a creative field. It’s nice to take a step outside of my work and the projects I am on to hear about what they are working on or creative problems they are trying to solve.

How has the process of creating been during these turbulent times?

My process of creating at first was more difficult as I rely on social interactions to balance out the long period of time where I am working alone. It took me a while to find that balance again while having to stay at home by myself. I have now developed a few routines for my day as well as found other ways to get that social interaction and mental break from work while staying safe during these difficult times.

Social media has been a big help seeing how others have begun to spend their time and habits they’ve developed that have helped them get through the days when inspiration isn’t coming. I have also been watching a lot of documentaries and listening to more podcasts to get my mind wandering into areas I don’t normally dive into.

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