Check Out Brandon Campbell’s Story

Hi Brandon, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I grew up in Westport, Connecticut. Westport is about an hour’s drive into Manhattan and was a hub for professional illustrators and cartoonists who at the time still needed to hand-deliver their artwork to agencies and publishers in the City. My dad was one of those illustrators, so I was always surrounded by art supplies, illustration annuals, and instructional books. Drawing was always a big thing in our household.

As I got older and more involved in commercial art, I would pick my dad’s brain about his experiences, or reminisce about when we would pile into the car late at night to deliver a painting to his agent, hours before the deadline. He passed away in 2022, but because of the illustration community they were a part of, my mom has become somewhat of an illustration historian, so she is always a great resource for bouncing around names and works of familiar artists of that generation.

I studied graphic design at SUNY Purchase in New York. During my senior year, I became interested in motion graphics, which led to an internship-turned-job at Comedy Central doing design/animation for promos, show opens, logos, etc. When my wife and I moved from Brooklyn to Atlanta, I started working with an awesome creative studio here called Straight to Tell, animating for music videos, public health campaigns, and original in-house animation projects.

Shortly after, I joined the Creative Marketing team at CNN Original Series, working on key art and promo campaigns for their documentary series and films. Just after the pandemic, the Discovery merger led to major reorganization and layoffs in our department. At that point, I decided to give self-employment a go, and I’ve been working for myself as an illustrator ever since.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I don’t think a lot of things have stood in my way other than myself. Stretches of aimlessness and self-sabotage have made it a slow burn, alongside less self-imposed challenges like learning disabilities and social anxiety.

In the process of ironing out those issues, I started revisiting the things that inspired me as a kid: Nature, museums, books, and drawing. I switched from digital illustration back to pen and ink on paper, picked up a few cheap markers, and started to rediscover my natural drawing style and linework.

As a kid, I always experienced a wild burst of inspiration when watching cartoonists draw, so I started recording my own sketches and posting them on Instagram. It turns out a lot of other people love watching the drawing process as well, so that has become my main public expression of my work.

Through comments and messages I receive, I’ve learned that there are real therapeutic properties to art process videos, so I’m always grateful to hear from people who have found a moment of peace in their day through my work.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I work primarily in pen and ink, using a fountain or dip pen and brush pen markers. In the spirit of midcentury commercial artists, I use a limited color palette and try to reduce the subjects to their simplest forms. That reduction is often counteracted by more gestural, expressive marks, and by later influences like editorial and picturebook illustrations from my own childhood.

Because of the nostalgic subject matter of my work (midcentury modern kitsch, cocktail culture, classic Hollywood, etc.), I often work with vintage-inclined clients. I started this leg of my career in 2020, creating promotional artwork for Tiki Oasis, a biannual west-coast Polynesian Pop weekender, and have continued working with them ever since.