and take lots of photos and draw from real life. Just to get
out in the fresh air with the birds and nature and make
sketches then take this back into the studio and paint and
draw and dot but from sketches from being out in the
open.”
JB: “Tell me about your recent picture-a-day art-a-thon.”
KI: “So the first one I did was ‘Inktober’ on Instagram.
You could do a drawing a day for the whole of October
on anything you like. Mine ended up being New Zealand
themed. I found that if I tell people I’m doing it I have to
do it. I have quite a few followers on Instagram now and I
didn’t want to disappoint anyone so if you tell them you’re
doing this thing you have to do it. I quite enjoyed that so I
decided to do one myself in February, which turned out to
be feathers. I found that the more I did, the better I would
get. I would get home in the evening, get the house work
done and sort the kids out then get on with my drawing.
Sometimes it would be until midnight because I had to get
it done that day.”
JB: “How important is social media in your art?”
KI: “I set up an Instagram account to keep an eye on my
kids and then it was posting the odd picture and then it just
evolved into being about my artwork. The more comments
I got and the more followers I got the more confidence
I got from that. And soon you have a whole lot of artists
that you’re following and that are following you and it’s
like a community. So that led me to setting up the art page
on Face Book to get it out there. I’ve made a lot of sales
through it, especially Inktober on Instagram so it’s a good
way of marketing your art. But the community support
through Instagram is amazing. I feel like I have a lot of
friends all over the world now, even though some of them
I’ve never met. We talk almost every day and share our
art. It’s probably the main reason I am where I am today. It
gave me the confidence to sell my artwork and not just fill
up my walls.”You can find Kristin on http://www.instagram.com/kristin.ivill.
art and http://www.facebook.com/kristin.ivill