Interview with Graffiti Artist Jon Grim

XP-Pen: Could you talk a little bit about yourself?

Jon: My name is Jon Grim, and I'm an oil painter/graffiti artist. I've been doing graffiti for about twenty years and oil painting for about ten.

Sun Kissed

XP-Pen: Why do you choose graffiti art?

Jon: I had a unique upbringing in graffiti if you will because my father's been doing graffiti back in New York 1972, and my older brother also did graffiti. Naturally, you know them two being huge inspirations I took to it very very organically if you will.

2 Point Piece Done 

Dimension Hopper

XP-Pen: Could you talk about how you transit into digital art?

Jon: I can tribute digital arts to all of my success pretty much in the or community. Because before doing digital hyper-realism, I initially wanted to be a comic book artist, and I would always draw more comic book type stuff.  But I couldn't afford to do oil painting; I didn't have the money for it, so I did have you know a tablet and a digital software program to paint them.  I went ahead of my practice hyper-realism digitally first and then went ahead and applied that to oil painting.  Also, I did all my cartoons and things of that sort in digital as well, even some graffiti.  So all of my work stems from digital.

XP-Pen: What is your daily routine of work?

Jon: I think it's easy when you work from home to work as an artist; it's easy to get comfortable and lazy. So to keep on track with things,  I treat it like a real job.  Still, I treat it like a regular job anybody else would have. I wake up in the morning and get ready to do art the same way somebody might get ready to leave for work, and that helps me get into the zone for actually working on my or throughout the day.

XP-Pen: how do you apply the tablet to your work?

Jon: So I had mentioned earlier how a lot of my work stems from digital because I couldn't afford to do oil painting. So I did much digital hyper-realism and worked with many models and makeup photographers back then to paint portraits hyper-realistically, which helped me out tremendously. Later on, when I would finally transit from digital to hyper-realism and even nowadays when I do cartoons or do anything that isn't traditional oil painting, all that happens digitally that I even do much graffiti digitally, so the tablet is a massive part of my current work you know cycle.

XP-Pen: What will you do to keep inspired?

Jon: I think inspiration in art is one of those things that many artists focus on, and it's one of those things that's not very necessary because it's not something that's going to be there 100% of the time. Inspiration is one of those things that you're certainly going to lack from time to time, and I believe it's essential for many artists to get used to working on their art without having inspiration.  When you have inspiration, it's excellent and fantastic; you indeed take control of that and take that opportunity to draw or paint or do your creative outlet, but I think it's essential to be able to draw and all that stuff that you need to get done.  As far as keeping the inspiration, though, as far as it goes, I like to understand and analyze a lot of the things in my environment and around me. It's like that I can better illustrate them and draw them and create them within my artwork, so that's where a lot of my inspiration stems from I will do much observing and studying and then researching on specific objects for specific places or specific things that way I can bring them to life more accurately my artwork.

XP-Pen: What advice will you give to the newbie artist?

Jon: No.1 patience, No.2 persistence, and No.3 having the discipline to work consistently.

Once again, as I said before, I think it's easy for anybody who works at home to get a little bit complacent or lazy. Having the discipline to not fall into that trap is essential. Also, having the discipline to be patient with progress is very important. Because it can be demoralizing that drawing for hours and hours, and you do not get the results you want.  But understanding that it takes time and patience to achieve the goals you want is critical, just for your mental stability and not going crazy in your studio.