Cindy Avelino is a freelance artist and illustrator from Brazil. After taking the leap to follow a career in art and study a few years ago, she has come a long way and is now producing work for clients like Fantasy Flight Games.
See Cindy’s ArtStation-powered portfolio website.
For Cindy, it was all about the seamless setup.
“I like how easy and fast it is to make a really nice portfolio. In no time I had mine ready to show – it was amazing! I also like how well you can separate the categories in it by creating new albums. You don’t know how this feature helped me. The site is also sleek and fast to navigate, I love it!
In this interview, she shares how she got her start in her career, what got her more job offers and more.
How did you begin your career as an artist?
I started just doing commissions for people that wanted their characters illustrated. I quit my job at the end of 2014 and have been working as a freelance artist since 2015. It was not easy though. I quit my job without a solid knowledge of the art fundamentals. Fortunately, thanks to the internet and help from my husband and parents, I was able to take online art classes and was able to learn how to study. I didn’t know how to find my path to be an artist, what to study, how to improve and I have been learning this process over the these years.
Working on small commissions was great for me because I could apply all my studies and practices to them. I always wanted to do my best in each piece but I always wanted to make an illustration for big companies. Lucky for me, this year I was able to start doing freelance work for larger companies. I have to say thanks to all the people that helped me to get where I am. I did some online courses from Schoolism, Illustration for games in Skill Tree and this year I have finished Drawing Fundamentals with Carlos Luzzi but I still want to continue to reserve some hours of my day to practice.
Tell us about one of your favorite projects.
My favorite piece was done for a homework project from an online art class (Illustration for Games). I have learned so much and had a ton of fun in this class so I’m very thankful to the teachers. This piece represents my hard work and I named it “Training time”.At that time, I was studying and practicing art for 6h – 7h per day. It was a difficult but enjoyable time for me but I can’t get through this insane practicing time again nowadays.
I also like my
latest one. I think it represents better how my current skills in art are, I really tried my best and had a lot of fun!
What have you done that helped you get noticed or get job offers?
That’s a hard question for me. I really don’t know. I just posted the works I really like to do like these anthropomorphic characters and creatures and people seems to like them so I am really happy and grateful! I post with some care, of course, and think about the quality of them.
At the start of last year at an art conference in Curitiba – Brazil (Topia – Art Experience)
Bruno Biazotto and
Caio Monteiro advised me that my style of work is for a specific niche and it would be hard to get a job X or a Y career, but they encouraged me to continue doing it and to focus in my strengths. It gave me a direction that I have persisted at and it was good for me. I can now make a living working on commissions and as I said earlier, it helped me improve my work and see results.
What advice do you have for new artists to start growing a following?
Don’t betray yourself! Don’t post works that you don’t enjoy to do just because it is popular. Follow your heart and do what you like and it might result in a better and original work. It may also help you to stand out in lots of galleries with awesome art but very identical in appearances or styles.
It’s also important to be kind with people, to smile and to be proactive I think. Be a nice person, start to hear the critiques from your artist friends, let them help you, start to help them too and so on. Learn forever.
See more of Cindy’s work on her portfolio website. Find out more about ArtStation Pro websites here.
