” I had originally planned to post half of this text about my thoughts on working with Nikke but then we talked and he told me what happened after our collaboration and it really made me beam. Here’s his story.” – Martin Eaton

“I remember feeling flattered when Martin, a writer from New York, asked if I, a budding artist from the Netherlands, wanted to make drawings for his book. I already found it miraculous that he found me on Instagram and that my style appealed to him. Of course, I said yes.

Pretty soon, I noticed how much difficulty I had working on commission. My work is often very fast and highly intuitive. At the time, these worlds seemed almost impossible to reconcile. I wanted to deliver the best possible product, so I made many sketches and was often dissatisfied with the results. Somehow, I was missing spontaneity, something I greatly value.

Eventually, something emerged that we were both happy with. Thankfully! But it brought me much more. Working within a framework taught me a lot. Martin supported me well in this. The greatest benefit became apparent much later. The studies I had made were liked thousands of times on Instagram within a few days, instead of a few hundred times as I was used to. Within weeks, the counter was already at 10,000. And it didn’t stop there.

By now, the original drawings have been sold to a gallery in France and resold. Reproductions are still being sold via my website. Digitally, this work has been seen hundreds of thousands of times and has become an identifying characteristic of my personal style. At the moment, I make a living from making art. A dream. Made possible in part by Martin.”

Nikke. @nikke_naeme“

“I was uncertain about doing a collage set for this project but I really liked Edyta’s work and put the question to you, my followers. By a 68-32 margin, people said move forward. But I have to say, this was probably the hardest series I’ve done and that’s why it’s so short. Edyta was professional and open to my ideas but…I simply couldn’t figure out how to concept an image based on other images that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t search for a tiger and a skateboard and ask her to use these because I wanted 1960’s type images and their content isn’t easily accessible. I had to offer more general ideas and conceptual thoughts and that didn’t allow for the best interpretation. I think Edyta got frustrated with the process as well. It’s a beautiful medium, collage, but I think it takes a different kind of creative direction than I can perform with my lack of experience working with it. It’s not easily modifiable like the other mediums I’ve used and that restriction was a serious challenge. But I’d still highly recommend Edyta as her work is excellent.⁣ ⁣ In her words:⁣ ⁣ My collaboration with Martin was interesting and full of twists. It has enriched my previous experience in illustrating literature and various forms of the written word (illustrations and covers). We had to come together in the middle to illustrate his vision while maintaining my style and artistic vision – we had many discussions about it.⁣ ⁣ In my illustrations for Martin’s texts I wanted to convey the emotions, scenes he described, as well as my style and love for monochrome collage surrealism. In recent years I mainly create works in black and white, sepia and gray, also playing with the spaciousness of newspapers and cutouts.⁣ ⁣ I wanted to express it fully on the occasion of this challenge – I like the idea of combining the visions of the author of the texts with the visions of artists, creating a platform for shared emotions and feelings.⁣ ⁣ See more of her work at @edytaciosekcollages” – Martin Eaton

“I discovered Gavlina when searching for a knife palette artist and I found her father’s work. His instagram was filled with beautiful pieces that had a roughness in style that I really liked. I reached out and she responded that he had tragically died just that year. I can’t imagine how difficult that would be. We discussed my project anyways and she told me he’d been teaching both her and her sister his style since they were kids. Some of her pieces were stunning and she was interesting in trying in his place. So we gave it whirl!⁣ ⁣ In working with Gavlina she was always responsive and professional and that was really appreciated. I’m not sure this project was quite the right fit though as my creative requirements aren’t always solved easily with reference images. Many great studio artists have their subjects right in front of them and that’s how they produce their best work. I think Gavlina is more of this type of artist. But I’m happy with what we created together and I can’t wait to see how she keeps growing as a painter.” – Martin Eaton

“Working with Martin was an interesting experience for me. His stories have understatement and room for the viewer’s imagination. Everyone can color the stories in their head.⁣ ⁣ At first Martin and I had trouble translating. I was fortunate that my boyfriend has an excellent command of English. He’s an artist, like me @art.nesmeloff . He helped me and Martin understand each other better and helped me rule some sketches.⁣ ⁣ Artists draw inspiration from different sources, Kandinsky in music, Salvador Dali in dreams, and I in light.⁣ ⁣ Natural light or electric, I am fascinated by light and shadow. Bright contrasts and reflections from the sky or very soft imperceptible transitions in the pouring rain, reflections on the pavement, as if the whole world is underfoot.⁣ ⁣ Like my dad, I work with a pallet knife, in the technique of corpulent coloristic painting. Oil paintings comes out alive, in different lighting, the picture looks different.” Maria Gavlina

View Gavlina’s portfolio at @gavlinamariya⁣ ⁣

“I originally reached out to Damien as an artist to finish a series begun by another who dropped out unexpectedly. I asked him to mirror that style so the full set would feel cohesive. It was a mistake. Damien was easily capable of mirroring this other style but I had overlooked his own strong visual eye. When I let go of trying to have one complete set that looks the same and opened myself to having two sets by two artists, things flourished. The final piece in his series is one of my all time favorites and it was totally of his style and our collaborative vision. This discovery also radically changed how I’ll be doing this project going forward.⁣ ⁣ From now on I’ll be using artists to varying degrees. Some will have 6-10 pieces, some just a few. This will allow me to radically speed up how long a full collection (100 stories) will take. So I’m incredibly glad I had the chance to work with Damien. He’s talented and responsive and incredibly easy to work with.” – Martin Eaton

“I had just finished a massive graphite drawing that I’d been working on for over 6 months – swipe and you’ll see – when Martin got in touch asking if I’d like to work with him, he’d seen the drawing and appreciated all the detail I had captured. Simultaneously hesitant (due to my existing backlog of work) and interested (due to the excitement of something new and different), I decided to go ahead. Here we are 9 months and six drawings later and I’m very grateful for the experience. I’ve never worked with somebody else on any form of visual art before, never have I been given the opportunity to use my imagination to this extent in commissioned work. It has been a steep learning curve in many ways, all positive! I really enjoyed being able to bring the visuals to Martin’s stories and I hope his readers enjoy them too.” -⁣ Damien. @artwoerke⁣ ⁣

“The last year of this project has been really grueling. Covid has wreaked pure havoc for me and I’ve produced less in twelve months than the prior twenty-four. It’s been disheartening. This recent pinbox series was a prime example. It was planned to be one of most ambitious series’ to date. I was going for a life-like pinbox that would have animated movement, blood accents and be 5-8 second clips each. ⁣ ⁣ I hadn’t done this before and my first forays into 3D had been a failure. It was just too time consuming for the artist to make it work for what I could afford to pay. This project currently brings me $0 in revenue so my savings and working another job pay the bills and fund the artwork.⁣ ⁣ When I shared the creative direction I wanted for this series with my artist assistant, he suggested Liam. They’d both attended RISD and he showed me some of Liam’s work. I liked it and reached out. Liam seemed excited about the project and we came to agreement and began.⁣ ⁣ Unfortunately, things didn’t go entirely as intended and what I hoped would be a month turned into half a year. Covid was heavily to blame. But Liam discounted the final price and it’s fair and the completed still images look great. Liam is a talent for sure, but he’s just starting his career. His expertise, speed and knowledge will continue to grow and I’m certain he’ll make an incredible mark in the animation space.⁣ ⁣ But in my selecting him I diverted from what I’d learned after the first year of this project; full-time working artists are the best fit for me. It was a learning experience and I’ll take it on board once again as the project continues. I’m still looking into possibly animating these pieces so keep an eye out for my coming YouTube and TikTok pages, both are coming in the next few weeks!⁣” – Martin Eaton

View more of Liam’s portfolio at @liam_archibald_art

“Sonya was one of the first artists I found for this project back in 2018. At the time, my method for working with illustrators was different. I was passing them new stories each week and we’d work through their illustration and then rinse and repeat. This has proven to be a bad method. Both their schedules and mine get busy and are interrupted and the process starts and stops…a lot! Now, I give all the stories to an artist at once and it’s much more efficient and time saving and the quality of work has a consistency that I’m liking.⁣ ⁣ I chose Sonya because she identified herself as a student artist and I’d already had interest from many career illustrators who had decades more experience. I liked the thought of using someone younger and seeing how my writing and this project would resonate.⁣ ⁣ In our video chat she really got what I was trying to do. When she asked why I reached out I identified the piece in her portfolio that I really liked, the next in the image slides, because it was dense and had a light grittiness. I worried slightly that the digital style my steal some of the life from the end piece but wanted to give it a go.⁣ ⁣ I think, at this point, that her work ended up being really solid, but a tad bit similar to another artists I used previously. This was something I hadn’t anticipated because their styles are quite different. The similarity being…me. It’s helped me change how I select new artists, choosing styles dramatically different from each other. It will be more fun and because of it I think the project will be richer.⁣ ⁣ We were originally going to do almost twice as many pieces but the project had already taken months and I think her enthusiasm waned and I was fine ending where we did as the process now is quite different and more efficient. I do wonder what else we could have done together, though, but I can’t wait to see how she progresses. She’s very talented!⁣ ⁣ You can visit her Behance portfolio via the URL in the first comment.” – Martin Eaton

“Finding Thomas and @lastmaps was a gold mine! I’d been searching for a pointillism artist for months. It’s a more niche art form so there’s fewer really talented people doing it and when he showed interest I was optimistic. His incredibly well curated Instagram, creative and thought out, and the amazing detail in the lion on the pencil, demonstrated he was talented. No question. But it was working with him during the test piece where I was incredibly impressed. He’s totally professional, punctual, open to ideas but presented his own and always positive. It turned out exceptional and I couldn’t have been happier he agreed to do an entire series. It was a beyond pleasurable collaboration and I’ve already hired him to do a new piece!” – Martin Eaton

⁣”Hey folks! I hope you’ve enjoyed the artwork I crafted with Tomorrow’s Vig for this incredible series of stories. This collaboration has been one of my favourites in a long time. Heritage style ink work is the life blood of my little design brand, and dot work is one of the most important tools in the ink box. I knew it was going to be a real challenge to use pointillism to capture the feelings and notions offered in the writing, which was exciting. The main challenge was in the different textures, from portraits to glass. It pushed what I thought was possible.⁣ ⁣ Every story really inspired me, as I’m sure it has all of you readers, and the creative fire we stoked throwing ideas back and forth was magic. The art direction always provided a clear target, and I appreciated the trust when it was time to take the plunge in ink. Everything goes from 0 to 100 with ink, you sketch it up and refine the drafts, but all of a sudden there is a point of no return when the pen begins its work. Each drawing journey is long, things take time to build in tiny dots, and it’s the patience that it requires that resonates most with me, and these stories deserved the time. ⁣ ⁣ Again, I hope you’ve enjoyed the series and we hope to return one day to collaborate again with T.V. Until then, here’s to the next adventure!” – Thomas @Lastmaps

“This series was the first non-2D work for T.V. I thought it’d be too time intensive for an artist and thus too costly for me. Originally, I’d conceived to use CGI instead but I thought to seek out some origami artists and just try. I found Riccardo through his great work in an origami competition. Then seeing his portfolio, I was struck by the deer and the dragon pieces and decided to reach out.⁣ ⁣ He liked my project and our first chat was lively and fun. We agreed to do a test piece; the PS4 controller. I think he got hooked on the challenge and I was blown away by the fast turnaround and high quality in the mockups. We decided to continue and do an entire series together.⁣ ⁣ Riccardo is a strong-minded artist, which I respect, but he wasn’t inflexible and we pushed each other. I think his teaching experience was also a big bonus. When I wanted to incorporate a non-paper element, the sand; the spider; the pipe markings, he was able to do it digitally and thus keep the integrity of the final pieces wholly from his skillsets. That was impressive. The final origamis we developed together far exceeded my expectations and the completion time was one of the best of all the artists I’ve worked with. I’m super proud of this collaboration and look forward to working with him many times in the future. It was a pleasure!⁣” – Martin Eaton

“I knew from the beginning that the collaboration with Martin would have been a tough one, designing several original origami models of very specific subjects with a single type of medium-thick paper with no cuts or glue in a limited amount of time is hard! But I accepted enthusiastically to put my skills to test, and I’m so glad I did it!⁣ ⁣ Sometimes it was actually hard to find the sweet spot between what was doable by just folding paper and what Martin had in his “mind eye” but I think this was the key ingredient to push the subjects further!⁣ ⁣ I love Martin’s vision and persistency and I’m thankful I have been given the opportunity to share my origami art with a wider audience that is not the usual audience of the community of origami enthusiasts.⁣”⁣ – Riccardo Foschi – @oricgami

“I encountered Ryan’s work while searching for an artist with a more macabre sensibility. My following seems to like that style so I wanted to do a darker series. I loved Ryan’s black and white pencil work and the fact that deeper in his portfolio there was also the more wholesome. But each impressed me so I approached him and he accepted!⁣ ⁣ For this series I wanted to incorporate inverted black and white line work with almost photo realistic imagery merged together. We tried various processes to get there but in the end it just proved too time consuming. That’s a big challenge of this project, staying original but keeping artist time manageable. In the end we found a different mix of Ryan’s realism with angry, doodle-sketch style and this worked well!⁣ ⁣ Unfortunately, this series was met by the most setbacks this project has yet to encounter while working with one artist. Ryan’s work became overwhelming, Instagram was making it really difficult to get in front of my followers, two new artists I’d hired didn’t work out…it was a serious challenge and brought the feed to a stand still for a few months. That was a bummer.⁣ ⁣ But it was also a great learning experience. I’ll be focusing more on bringing in full time artists so you guys don’t have delays as often in seeing new content and I’ll work harder to have posts pre-finished and banked. That’s a big one ‘cause it can take months to find the final artist that a series will use.⁣ ⁣ I’m glad things are back to normal and Ryan and I got to finish our collaboration. He was just graduating when we started this project and since we finished I’ve been really impressed with how he’s continuing to improve as an artist. I’ll definitely work with him again! ⁣ ⁣ Ryan’s included some of his favorite portfolio pieces in this carousel, Images 4-9, take a look, comment and share. Enjoy more of his work and go say Hi to him at @ryanvandongen.”

“I was excited to work with Ze for this series because we’d try to collaborate at the start of the project but it didn’t work out. His Fish illustration attracted me to his portfolio and I wanted something dark and surreal but playful, like that, but we couldn’t find the stylistic objective from it. So we opted to not continue.⁣ ⁣ A year later, looking for a watercolor artist, his Instagram posts kept coming up in that medium. He’d stayed in touch, said he was still wanting to collaborate, so we talked again and this time it seemed to click. The style goal I wanted to achieve was a middle ground between his Mushroom and Fire Hydrant pieces. He tried a single piece and out of the gate I think he nailed my objective almost right away. Both happy, we decided to continue!⁣ ⁣ During this collaboration, Ze showed an interest in the data analytics that most artists haven’t. We would discuss what you, the audience, was engaging with each week. Originally, we started with a looser style. However, watching the data the fuller watercolors got more engagement so we shifted in that direction. I liked he was open and excited to use this data to influence us creatively.⁣ ⁣ This series also illuminated two trends that I’m currently watching. The first is that close up compositions tend to be more popular. I’m not sure if it’s their simplicity or dramatic quality that’s the cause. The second is that darker toned illustrations get greater engagement. This will be interesting to test in the next series which will be noticeably darker in tone.⁣ ⁣ Ze’s a very talented artist with diverse styles. His talent is easily evident. I was impressed with the turnaround time for modifications and the level of detail in his iterations. They were more involved than I usual get and that allowed me to really shape the final pieces to my liking.⁣ ⁣ Our collaboration is one of the smoothest I’ve had with the project. He’ll be an artist I most certainly work with again and I’m very happy with the final result!⁣ ⁣ What did you all think?⁣” Enjoy more of Ze’s work at @zetavares

“I found José’s work while perusing illustrators in his native, Portugal. I was struck by how rich the artist community is in this country and had many great conversations with people I’ll definitely be reaching out to in the future.⁣ ⁣ In Jose’s portfolio, I saw one of his self-portraits (1) and it immediately caught my eye. It was dark and violent but vulnerable. He also showcased a variety of styles I liked, such as the Inktober image (2) that was light and playful, with a hint of cynicism. Finally, another self-portrait of his (3) gave me the idea that this format’s background could work for his series. I loved its light, Basquait quality. These convinced me that his aesthetic was perfect for this project. We had a great talk and he agreed!⁣ ⁣ I would describe our collaboration as two strong bulls in an arena. He can be opinionated, strong-willed and fights hard for his case for an artistic direction. I appreciated that! But through it he was always professional and the final pieces are stronger because of it.⁣” – Martin Eaton

“It’s been a long time since I got involved in a traditional media project, at least professionally. Not only that was unique, but these had to be illustrations that could explain abstract and complex ideas at first sight, in a more compelling way than just a logo or an icon. So it was a very original and refreshing project that I really enjoyed being a part of.⁣ ⁣ Working on concept art for videogames, the things I enjoy designing the most are those environments and objects that convey an emotion, a mood and a feeling without being directly characters. To tell a hidden narrative in those non-human things. And here, we worked together to get some symbols that were illustrations and that helps a storytelling to be told in an indirect but very alive way, representing concepts, surrealistic thoughts, and moments of action. And I especially enjoy the look for a raw, surreal and organic style while doing this.⁣ ⁣ If you want to check the rest of my work visit: www.artofmarinaortega.com” – Marina Ortega