Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Soltan.
Sarah, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
It’s always changing! I grew up an only child so I really had to find things to do to keep myself busy. Running around outside, playing video games, and drawing were the three big ones that really shaped my childhood. I spent a lot of time inside my imagination and would draw Pokemon (90s kid, represent!) and outfit designs and always get myself into acrylic paints. Unfortunately, the strong perfectionist side of me struggled with the inherent imperfection of art as I got older. I dropped drawing entirely in high school for the sake of my deteriorating health and started developing black and white photos with an old Canon film camera my mom used to use to take pictures of me growing up.
When I went to Kenyon College for two years I picked it back up but would spend so much time on getting everything to look hyperrealistic that it lost the magic I had when I would draw for fun as a kid. While I loved drawing, I knew I had to get over my need for perfection to make it a career (and to just keep myself sane). Now, I was able to merge my love of games and art and am about to graduate from SCAD Atlanta with a degree in Interactive Design and Game Development and Drawing and couldn’t be happier about giving up the need for everything to look like it does in real life all the time. After all, that’s the point of art, isn’t it? We have to bend the rules of reality somehow!
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
At my core I am a 2D artist, whether that be drawing, painting, mixed media collage, graphic design, anything in that category. However, I specialize in traditional and digital painting and drawing as a concept artist for games, so I essentially make the blueprints or the “inspiration art” for characters, environments, or props that would be handed off to a modeler or someone who would then create my idea in the flesh. I also design and illustrate the graphics for board games.
I love what I do as it’s the visual problem solving step; there truly can be no mistakes! It’s the equivalent of free writing but with shapes and line. It was also a career choice that is heavily in conflict with my personality some days, so I use it as therapy to let my mind just relax and let anything that wants to come out of my head just spill onto paper. My artwork truly spills from my guts, and my goal is to communicate emotion and connect people to one another through it, even if they each have a different experience while viewing. I love making people happy or comforted with words, but even more so with the visual impact of artwork, I think it can bridge gaps with more visceral feelings that words cannot.
Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
Hoo boy that’s a good question. Advice would be to make art for the sake of expressing yourself and who you are as a gift to the world, not as an end goal to something else. Draw what you love to draw and paint what you love to paint! Someone out there will love it because they can truly feel the emotion you used when you made it. As I am primarily a commercial artist by career, it can be very difficult to find time to just let loose and make something that isn’t for someone. Try to always find a spin on something to make it your own and you will love working on it. An artist I admire greatly named Kienan Lafferty said it can feel very spiritual to do this (as well to just make something for yourself), and I agree completely and try to remember that.
Also, don’t push something that you are tired of working on. You will get a gut feeling when it’s done or at least it’s “done enough.” I feel like many artists, myself included, feel the need to start something and they are a failure if they don’t finish it, but it’s perfectly okay to have many projects going on at once or little sketches here and there. They all feed into each other and fuel one another.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
A lot of my artwork is for very specific purposes and some of it I’m not at liberty to share. But! If I do show anything off, it will be on my Instagram, @sarahsoltanart. I’m also in the process of creating a board game set in Southeast Asia with a fellow Atlanta colleague! If you’d like to support our production or learn more about it, we have a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/RajaMandalaGame) and a website (http://rajamandala.com/).
My personal website explains a little bit of story behind some of my concepts and offers a different lens into my background.
I created one mixed media piece that is very dear to me to commemorate the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and my connection to it, and that is published in Incite 3: The Art of Storytelling. As for support, just a kind word or the knowledge that you connected to something I created means more to me than anything else! I’m pretty sappy and love feedback haha.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sarahsoltan.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahsoltanart/
Image Credit:
Sarah Soltan
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