Have you ever seen the step by step tutorials of how to draw a simple dog or hand, given it a shot, and then proceeded to fail miserably? If you have, then you have joined a large portion of the world population who have dipped their toe into the artistic world and then gave up soon after. Don’t worry – I’ve been there, but as our next featured creator will tell you, “it does get better.”
Emma Chase, a Junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is an all out Art Enthusiast who loves taking what she sees in animation and comics and recreating it. Her technique is all about perspective. Emma has a unique view of looking at her drawings as if they are puzzles that she needs to figure out; however, it isn’t always that technical. One of the themes she tends to focus on in her art is her “understanding of beauty.”
She uses this theme along with her puzzle solving perspective to learn and grow not just in the artistic world, but in all other areas of life as well. She hopes to be able to apply her skills to solve real world problems, bring awareness to them, and even create new things. I recently had a conversation with Emma to get more of an understanding of her art and a closer look at her unique perspective. Here are some of the highlights from our interview.
Getting Inspired
Me: What type of art are you most interested in?
Emma: “It’s a mix of western and eastern style similar to the way the newer animation is being portrayed. I don’t watch a ton of anime, but I did when I was younger, so that certainly has had an effect on the way I draw. I do take a lot of those tropes from that general area of art, but I also really like western comics as well. I wish I had more time to read them.”
Me: What is your first memory of being struck by a piece of art? In other words, what inspired you to begin drawing?
Emma: “I’ve always been drawing ever since I was little, but I really got hit by, ‘I’m gonna draw because I love what I see in animation or in comics’ from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic when I was nine or ten. Then I started drawing characters from this old video game called Team Fortress 2. I drew all of those characters and read the comics, and that’s when I really started liking the comic style. I really like that kind of comic style where it does have those influences from superhero movies and it’s over the top and it’s wacky and it’s weird, but it’s also aware of itself and doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
Me: Could you tell me a little about your creative process?
Emma: “The reason I don’t call my work ‘art’ is because I don’t approach it from an artistic sense, I approach it the way one would approach a puzzle. That’s why I focus on humans and anatomy and creating this image. I’ll see something that I really like, I’ll see a comic that I really enjoy, and I’ll take inspiration from the comic, and I’ll try to recreate it and I’ll fail miserably like eight thousand times, but eventually I’ll start to understand it and that’s when I complete the puzzle. When I’m really inspired I’ll sit and I won’t move for like three or four hours and I’ll just be drawing the same things over and over and over again just trying to figure out the last piece of the puzzle. Which is why I like design so much and my research project is speculative design because it's like, ‘this is a puzzle for me to figure out.’”
Me: Do you have a main theme that goes along with your work? Does it speak to life in general, your life, society, or do you use it as a form of expression?
Emma: “I think because the way I see it as a puzzle it’s hard to deeply internalize my art as I’m feeling. It’s hard to create my characters in a way that represents me. I really love creating beautiful things and beautiful people of all shapes and all different kinds of representations of what that beauty is. I like to expand my understanding of beauty. A lot of my inspirations were from very euro-centric and western kinds of approaches, but that’s not just what beauty is to me. Beauty comes from all over the world. I don’t want to appropriate the cultures, but I do want to appreciate that amazing beauty that I don’t really see that much in the media that I grew up with. I do like to have those little parts of beauty and put them into my art so I can appreciate them better.”
The Benefits and The Future of Art
Me: Do you see yourself having a future in art and doing it as a job or is it more of a hobby? Emma: “I see drawing characters as a hobby but the mental technique of seeing art as solving a puzzle in a visual way is something I apply everyday. I apply it to the way I learn. My career goal is to go into the field of design and my one dream is to go to the MIT media lab as a PhD or Masters and maybe not in the way of drawing characters but definitely in using the artistic edge that I have and applying it to making the world a better place.
“Right now I want to use this skill to learn new things and in the future apply my skills to solve problems and to create new things. Maybe just to help people by bringing awareness to problems that most people didn’t realize through this art skill.”
Me: What would you say to someone who is hesitant about creating art? How would you describe to them your view and the beauty or benefits of art itself?
Emma: “I think a lot of people look at their art when they are first starting and say ‘this sucks’ and they may not be wrong. The first time you draw, you aren’t going to be Michelangelo, it isn't going to be perfect; however, there are things that you naturally and intuitively know as a person that you apply to your art that other people don’t do and those are your strengths. I think that bringing those strengths to light and making people aware that they can do things well, even if it isn’t perfect yet, is beneficial. It’s like a muscle, you have to train it. Different people have strengths, and you have to value those strengths just like you would in anything else in the world.” ✨