Hello Cristina, can you give our readers a short introduction please; age, location, education, employment etc?
Are you kidding me? A woman never tells her age, LOL, but let’s say that I am just a little older than Megan Fox and much younger than Michele Pfeiffer…. OK, I am around the 40’s.
 Actually I am living in Canada, in a small city called Welland in Niagara Region, very close to Niagara Falls, USA border, but I never know my future location. It could be in USA or New Zealand depending on the job or job offer.
My education….. I am graduated at Business Administration; in Arts…., well I just studied in some private courses in Brazil to learn painting techniques, especially oil and charcoal. About drawing, I learned by myself. I was lucky because I always liked drawing and it was easy to me starting drawing and by practicing I got improvement in my skills. I also studied (long time ago in Brazil) Website development: Dreamweaver, Flash, HTML, and so on but never worked with that. I was more interested in the digital environment and the web design than the programming part itself.
I also used to be a teacher for drawing and digital painting at university for game development post graduation program.
Employment; well I worked as freelancer and under contract for TV Network Broadcast (TV Globo) in Brazil for four years, I worked in Comics Industry as colorist for five years, I worked for Newspaper as caricaturist and portraitist, I worked for Publishing as Children Book Illustrator and Painter, I worked for Colleges and Universities as Painting and Drawing teacher, I worked for AD agencies, Animation Studios… wow, a lot of things done. Fortunately I learned a lot.
But I always had my own business, my company, working as freelancer, like I am doing nowadays. I have my studio at home where I do my illustrations and paintings and my partner and husband does the web site work. Combined we can achieve a bigger market although the economy is slow and everybody fells the recession, that makes jobs more difficult each time.
I also teach at my studio. For now, I have few students but things are getting better and I see good things on the road. Maybe it will take a little time but it is coming.
Q. You are creating Portraits, Caricatures, and Illustrations from many years, so you started it just as a hobby or did you see the potential for your career?
As I said, I loved and still love doing portraits and caricatures, pinup art, fan art, actually I always have a sort of identity crisis in my work because I like so many things. I like portraits and also pinup art and also comic art, and also children illustration and also manga and so on that sometimes it is difficult to be focused in some style.
I would like to live only for my pinups and portraits, but it is still not possible, so I need to do lot of things to get the money to pay the bills ;-)
I was talking to my partner and we found out that actually I like to develop the characters in my drawings more than only drawing, I mean I love pinup art, but what really attracts me is drawing and painting one character that I just developed in my mind.
I think about a situation and I come up with an illustration that is also a pinup and I look for the references and after that I start my pencil sketches before painting.
So, coming to the subject I saw a potential for arts in my life although I did not realize that until twenty one or two years old (I lost lot of years because of that).
Q. With freelancing, sometimes you work as a part-time teacher too, and as far as we know you enjoy the teaching a lot, can you tell us what you enjoy in the teaching and can you leave freelancing work for full time teaching?
Let’s see…. Teaching is wonderful, is being alive, is exchanging knowledge, teaching is challenging, is motivating, is to be updated, is researching, and is simple…. Something I really love.
I like to teach kids, not so much the young ones, I prefer students after 10 years old and I like very much teaching seniors, but I am not saying that I do not like teaching students less than 10 years old OK. The point is that teaching such young students is more exhausting than the other ages. I really admire teachers that deal with junior Kindergarten up to grade 5.
While I am teaching I am also practicing and studying with the students and I also learn about new comic characters, I learn about games, I have a lot of fun because I play music to them, I mean I ask them what kind of music they like but I stimulate them to draw listen to the music like soundtracks (manga, anime, games and movies: Superman, X-Men, Starwars, Twilight, God Of War, Shadow of Colossus, etc.) and they love that.
Actually is like a hobby to me, it is a great pleasure and for older students, teenagers and around 20 years old I also play Jazz, Blues, New Age; you know… my classes are really nice, a lot of learning and fun indeed.
Leaving freelancing life to be full time teacher? I guess it is not possible, I mean even being a full time teacher I will be freelancer, perhaps much less workload but I won’t stop. I have a theory that a teacher needs to be in contact with the industry, needs to “work” with clients and pass through all stress of dealing with clients (hahahahaha), working with other artist in teamwork, suffer the deadline’s pressure, faces new programs and techniques in order to achieve client’s expectations….. Being update and challenged every time.
At least, I would continue producing my pinups and doing commissioning work for collectors, fans (portraits) and so on.
I would like to say, clearly and to avoid mistakes that I do not think teachers are not professionals like freelancers. I respect and admire them very much (I am also a teacher), I just think, and this is my opinion, that I could not stand only in the academic environment, I should do something else and this is my nature, the way I am.
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