Conversations with Sarah Walsh

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Walsh.

Hi Sarah, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I’m a professional illustrator, designer, and painter living in Kansas City. For the last twenty years, I’ve been making a living with my paintings & drawings.

My projects have ranged from a tiny painting on a toothbrush for Blue Q to reimagining Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, Matilda with the publisher Viking Books/Penguin Kids.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Moving here from my hometown of Albany, New York 20 years ago was a huge step in becoming the person that I am today. I was a single parent putting myself through full-time design school and supporting myself and my young daughter as a server at any number of restaurants and bars.

Fortunately, I had the support system of my mother and my grandmother to help make it happen. Right before graduating, I interviewed with Hallmark Cards here in Kansas City for a design position and got the job. The idea of moving halfway across the country with my little one was scary but I needed to make a better life for us. Although I had family support there was tension and chaos at home and it was stressful. I had a gut feeling about the job and went with it.

I ended up working at Hallmark in KC for 13 years as a designer/illustrator hybrid and in that time span of time, I learned so much. It was like getting paid to go to graduate school. In addition to amazing work experience, some really great personal things happened too. I met wonderful friends, joined a band with the coolest girls ever, and even met my husband. But I was getting itchy and the politics that came with working at a big corporation were starting to get to me.

In my thirteenth year, we sent our daughter off to college two weeks shy of her brother being born. He came a week early, Friday, September 13. Looking at that sweet little face gave me the courage to quit and pursue my freelance illustration career. I wanted to be home with him as much as possible and this would give me the flexibility we needed.

December 13th, 2013 was my last day. It’s very contrarian but I guess you could say 13 is my lucky number.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have experience in pattern design, hand lettering, product creation, and design, greeting cards, clothing, toys, home decor, children’s books, character development & more.

I have been fortunate enough to collaborate with wonderful companies like PBS, Washington Post, The Guardian, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Crate & Barrel to name a few. I also run and make artwork for Tigersheep Friends, a small batch illustration-based shop founded by myself and my partner Colin Walsh, a fellow illustrator.

Even though client work is very important to my practice and helps me make a living as a creative, I’m very passionate about making personal work and developing my own ideas. Whether it’s a page in my sketchbook or a large painting, taking time to make art for myself is at the core of my creative practice and keeps me engaged in my own process. It also plants new seeds for my client’s work as well.

Some things that inspire me are animals, nature, house plants, folk art, mid-century design and illustration, vintage children’s books, old toys and playgrounds, fashion, dreamy synth music, the 70’s and 80’s, victorian clothing, folklore, mythology, and travel.

Early on in my illustration career, I was lucky enough to visit the International Folk Art Museum and it blew my mind wide open. Seeing the playful quality of it all, the colors, the patterns… the characters, the symbols. I fell in love and it forever changes the way I look at and create art. I had a similar epiphany while visiting Meow Wolf in New Mexico a few years back.

I’m really drawn to that part of the United States. Something about it speaks to me on a very intimate and guttural level. Both of these experiences have really influenced the way I make art and how Igo about my creative process.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Keep a sketchbook or journal! Keep track of your thoughts, ideas, and random thoughts. They are treasures to harvest and be the basis for amazing projects. It will help you see patterns and themes in your own work and track your ideas.

As I delved more into an illustration I started to see the value in sketchbooks as a way to record different ideas and thoughts but I still did not enjoy looking through them. I came across these beautiful sketchbooks done by an artist named Amy Kligman. They were full of paint and cut paper and would barely close. They were so rich with color and texture and it blew my mind.

When I realized I could paint or use cut paper or anything else I could get my hands on it was a game-changer for me. Unspoken rules like only using pencils to sketch in a sketchbook or that you’re not supposed to tear any pages out of them either. These were rules I made up in my head and those beautiful sketchbooks knocked them down.

The beauty of acrylic paint is that you can just paint over it if you don’t like it. You can use paint, paint markers, colored markers, cutouts from magazines, fabric, regular markers links. Really anything you want. Any medium you can get your hands on absolutely belongs in a sketchbook. It’s all about keeping an ongoing creative conversation with yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: Sarah Walsh
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahwalshmakesthings/
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Tigersheepfriends