On developing and refining your creative style
Prelude
Ashley Dreyfus is an illustrator and mural artist based in Los Angeles, California. Her art and characters exist in an alternate reality, where humans are transformed into their alter egos, trees have grown legs, and cats drink coffee. A few of Ashley’s influences include Keith Haring, vintage clothing/cartoons and her love of coffee.
Conversation
On developing and refining your creative style
Illustrator and mural artist Ashley Dreyfus discusses the pros and cons of going freelance, being kind to yourself, and being self-taught.
As told to Jun Chou, 2733 words.
Tags: Illustration, Process, Mental health, Time management, Creative anxiety, Income, Independence.
Tell me about your creative journey and how you got from where you were to where you are.
I’ve been making art my whole life. My mom noticed that I was a very visual and creative person, and throughout my childhood and stuff, I was involved in as many artistic classes or community opportunities as possible, and then leading into high school and stuff, it became very prominent that that was what I wanted to eventually make my end goal with being full-time doing something in the arts, graduated and decided that college did not make any sense to me. My first job was at Baskin Robbins and with what money I had, I wanted to buy myself a little plug-in tablet and challenge myself to learn how to draw digitally, to connect with people over social media, connect with my community. I’m from Boise, Idaho, so it was a pretty small place.
I challenged myself to draw something new every single day for a new year in the hope that I would learn how to draw digitally. I did that pretty much for about five years. That’s how I really developed my style. I’ve always loved cartoony illustrative characters and monsters or humanoid characters, cats wearing shoes and stuff. It’s always been so true to me. I feel like I’m a reflection of my work, very bubbly and colorful and silly. I never take anything seriously so I like that to reflect in my work.
I’ve been full-time now for almost six years, and it’s been really cool to be able to not only share my work with the world, but work on amazing client-based projects and again, work within my community and do things personally and professionally.
You’ve had huge clients from PBR to smaller brands like NOOWORKS, designing everything from merchandising to clothing. Do you have a different process when you work on something really big or a different process when it comes to the medium?
It’s always been different. Especially self-taught, you’re finding your way through the weeds a little bit. From a very early time when I started taking on clients, it was a little bit more stressful where my process is literally starting with a sketch and then going from there. My process itself is always just throwing out a bunch of ideas, sketching an entire giant page full of things, and picking and choosing, collaging from there, to then hopefully finalize a design to then share with the client I’m working with.
But the more serious corporate client type things, usually people are coming to me with some kind of idea in mind. It’s really cool because then I’m able to transform these ideas into my world and give my spin and make it more vibrant, psychedelic and playful rather than it being so literal.
Do you feel like you’ve worked better with more or less constraints?
Less constraints are great. It depends on the brand. Usually there’s so much play with certain clients that reach out to me, and usually they’re very open-minded to either giving me a really loose idea, even if it is very serious or to the point. The problem happens when people are like, “Hey, you sent this idea but I actually want to go in a completely different direction, so let’s take a complete left turn and then have you draw all of these different things rather than what you started with.” That’s a little bit more difficult.
Are you pretty good at scrapping your work and killing your darlings or do you still feel very attached? I know working in illustration and design, there’s a lot of projects and ideas that don’t see the light of day.
The great thing about scrapping things or having things be put to the side, it’s all still things that belong to me. I never have to sell myself or my work, which is really nice. And so even if something doesn’t work for one particular client, it’s really nice to be able to go back into that sketchbook or reflect on that design and then absorb it for my own use. Because I’m always reinventing ideas and developing characters more and more throughout the time that I draw.
I love that. How did you discover this style? You said it’s always existed within you—what was it about this particular psychedelic ’70s kind of vibe that you really stuck with?
I have such a deep appreciation for nostalgia. Even though I never lived in this time, there’s so much to build off of the colors and the shapes of all of that, everything that was built in the ’60s and ’70s by artists creating styles. I’ve always felt very strongly about the colors, the characters. I love cats, so you’ll see a lot of that in my work. I love being outside at the park, so lots of trees and flowers and butterflies and kind of details like that. The style became more refined throughout the time that I spent doing this sort of 365 project and accepting more work from clients.
It’s always just been something that feels natural and otherworldly to me. When I sit down to draw something, I already feel like the design is on the paper before I even put pen to the paper. I’m able to see it, so it’s really fun to me. But the cartoony style, again, it’s just kind of who I feel like I am as a person reflected in my work. I love how playful and expansive the world can become. And it’s all at my fingertips, I don’t have to work under somebody else’s ideas or motivations.
You’ve kind of described the sculptor seeing the statue within this piece of marble with the way that you see it. You said that you’ve always been a creative person, but are you a “trusting your instincts” kind of artist, or has it taken time to listen to your gut?
It’s a little bit of both. It felt very natural to me to work in this style throughout high school even. It’s fun to go back in those really, really old sketchbooks and see all of the stuff I was making back then. Even if it wasn’t the exact same thing that I’m making right now, I can still see so much of the character world building and the colors and the playfulness of it.
But I’ve wanted to be more open-minded. I’ve wanted to be expansive into different mediums and stuff, so I never hold myself back. Expanding and being open-minded is also really good for the creative process for me.
What are some of those things that you want to experiment with that you haven’t yet, and what are some of those things that you have?
I love still life drawing. I don’t do enough of that. Sometimes you get so stuck in the creative process of drawing these five things over and over again just in different environments and obviously that’s a style for a particular artist. But it’s kind of fun when somebody else gets to control that aspect of things, and you’re able to look at something and imagine it in your own style. And maybe a new character or a new way of drawing even a box or a building comes out of that. I’ve definitely been more interested in developing a human character to live in my world at some point. Because right now I’ve had so much fun creating these cat and dog characters that wear go-go boots and clothes.
Sometimes you get bored drawing on your iPad all day. So I like to pick up new things constantly. Right now I’m embroidering. It’s really fun to take denim and put janky, little embroidery pieces all over your jackets and jeans. It always inspires new ideas.
Yeah, I feel working with your hands is always a nice break from the more digital parts of your job. So that’s really lovely. Outside of your creative practices, how else do you refill your cup?
That’s also a really good question. It’s something I notice a lot of illustrators don’t spend a lot of time worrying about because we’re constantly so absorbed by working. I’ve had to literally put a stop on myself and be like, “Hey, so today you’re not working. What are you going to do?” I love going on walks. I go to coffee shops. I love going to cat and dog rescues and hanging out with animals all the time. Of course, spending time with friends. I have a lot of artist friends and we love to randomly pick a place and go and sit at the park for an afternoon and just decompress and not do work.
I’ve always been very active and I love being outside. I’m a very social and lively person outside of sitting at my desk, but sometimes it’s really hard to find that kind of work and life balance when you are your own boss.
When you’re your own boss and no one’s telling you you have to work certain hours, how do you create that sort of structure for yourself? What are some of the benefits and the perils of freelance life?
Before I was full time, I was doing lots of customer service jobs, so I am trying to tap back into that part of my life where I was working three or four days a week and then having this free time to myself. Obviously the positives of being full-time freelance is that it’s really cool that people reach out to you and are interested in your particular style. I no longer have to worry about working with people’s very specific ideas and having to refine myself to a very sharp edge that doesn’t feel like myself.
The negatives: You can work whenever you want, but you could also just spend a week not doing anything and then feel really stressed the next week about deadlines. Finding that kind of balance between feeling happy when you are taking time off and not feeling like you’re missing out on doing the work, giving yourself that break is really important. My routine is very morning based, so if anybody’s bothering me about doing chores or stuff in the morning, I’m like, absolutely not. This is my peaceful moment with my cup of coffee, my cat, and my sketchbook.
It’s so important to protect your peace. How do your clients find you generally? Is it through social media? Word of mouth?
I spread myself pretty evenly over social media. I’m not as present on TikTok, which is nice for me because I don’t have to worry about being a part of yet another algorithm. I would hope that people find me through my website but it’s always Instagram. A lot of creative directors find artists through Instagram when they’re creating moodboards. That creates an environment for me to exist in where I can create whatever I want to on any given day and share it with Instagram. And maybe that just fits perfectly with what this future client is looking for. It’s a perfect synergy. I don’t have to worry about what people are wanting to trend or be popular at that very moment. I can just create work that feels really good to me, and it’s really nice when people resonate with that.
Do you have a healthy relationship with social media or does it bring you anxiety?
I like to think that I have a pretty healthy relationship with Instagram, but more recently, at this moment in politics, it’s really hard to not see what’s happening. I don’t check the news personally, but it finds its way creeping into Instagram. I always try to make it a very even balance where I only use it when I’m really interested in seeing what my friends are up to and then having a really solid period in the day where there’s just absolutely no presence of looking at Instagram particularly at all. But you have to be really kind to yourself. I talk to my boyfriend about this a lot. You have to always meet yourself where you’re at. If what feels good to you is scrolling on Instagram for an hour out of the day, as long as you can pull yourself out of it and do something that’s healthier for the brain afterwards.
But it’s also really hard because when you use Instagram as a freelancer. You’re constantly seeing new brands, new companies pop up. The way I find clients, I’ll just go on their page, maybe I’ll follow them or interact or send a cold call email. So it’s almost like a double-edged sword if you’re not spending time on social media. They’re potentially missing out on connecting with future clients or making yourself more visible by liking, commenting and posting all the time. But I have found that with the steady momentum with my career over the years, it’s been nice to take more of a backseat to constantly scrolling on social media. It’s been driving itself, people find me naturally, and that feels really good.
It’s really interesting what you said feeding the algorithm earlier with regards to TikTok. It’s like you have to engage with it, otherwise you will be punished by the algorithm. Double-edged sword is a perfect way of describing that.
I noticed that if I want to look at artistic things, then I really only allow myself the time to really engage with those moments in my life. But at the same time, when you have art museums and art events going on, especially living in LA, it makes it that much easier to disconnect and really feel like I’m living in the moment.
So what was the transition like going from Idaho to Los Angeles?
It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I honestly never thought that I would’ve moved from Idaho because it’s so cozy there. I lived there my entire young life with my mom, and she’s basically the other half of my business; she helps me pack and ship all of my stuff.
My boyfriend and I have been together for a long time and we’ve always imagined this life that we could have being here. And thankfully, this is another tidbit with social media— I’ve made all of my real life friends through using Instagram. I felt very fortunate to have just this built-in wonderful community of friends that are all also friends in real life. People are able to tell me about all of the fun things happening around town. I live near my friends. And so that’s what made it easier to make that transition.
At the same time, Boise has always been my home, and it will forever be a place that helped me become the person I am today, creatively and in my personal life. I go back often. It’s honestly really nice to feel like I can just hop on a plane, and it’s very cheap to fly from a small airport down here. I get to go visit family, friends all the time and it’s almost as if I never left.
There’s something very California retro about your aesthetic, so I think it’s a very natural marriage. What is one thing that you wish that people knew about Idaho that most people don’t know about?
This is so surface level, but we’re not all just potatoes. Idaho is a beautiful place. I think it’s very underrated. Almost completely untouched. There’s beautiful hiking. There’s places to feel like you’re in an urban living area, but also you can escape that almost immediately. And it’s really a utopia.
Ashley Dreyfus recommends:
Coffee and thrifting as a cure all
Calling your mom before cutting your bangs
Knowing good things take time
Watching youtube tutorials before giving up on anything!
Trusting the process
- Name
- Ashley Dreyfus
- Vocation
- illustrator