Please tell us a bit about yourself and your art career. I studied art and design in France, and then I decided to go to Denmark for a year. I really liked the lifestyle, the design, but it was also very different from where I came from. I stayed there for eight years and it's where my art journey started as an illustrator.

I felt lonely in Denmark. Lonely because I could not find a job in the creative field, so I had to think about where I wanted to go – how my life would be if I wasn’t a creative. And that made me depressed because it's not the life I would like to have. So I did many projects with friends, like start-ups, posters, but they never worked. But from that experience, I learnt a lot about entrepreneurship, which you don't learn in art school. You learn creative techniques, but you don't learn how to make money with your art.

 

 

 

 

 

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So after school, for about seven years, I was doing small projects like trying to sell bags or going to the market to sell posters, and I learnt a lot by doing that, but I didn't find myself in these projects. So I started to feel depressed because of reasons like not finding yourself professionally, not feeling home in the country you are in, not knowing what you want to do. So I started to draw black characters surrounded by bold colours to create contrast, and with messages. In Denmark, I felt like people were not seeing me as French, but they were seeing me as a person of colour. They were limiting my sense of self into something and I was like, “But I'm so much more". And also, it's not a country that is presenting diversity. So I wanted to do something to clash with what I saw, what I was living, what I was surrounded by. I wanted to draw black characters with slogans like “I love my hair, I love my skin, I love who I am” to spread positive messages of who I am and the people who look like me. I wanted to say, "We are all here and we exist, and we have so much more to give".

I was part of a Facebook group, ‘Women of Colour of Copenhagen’, with people from around the world who were gathering and exchanging their experiences. I was making some visuals for those events that we were organising. I was listening to the stories of people and being inspired and feeling that I was belonging somewhere, to a community. I was starting to make those visuals for myself and posting them online. And then people liked it, not only in Denmark, but mostly in the UK, in the US, and some other places. They were relating to my story, and that's how it started. And then there were some blogs talking about my work, and that's how I got to work with bigger companies and get more jobs.

 

 

 

 

 

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You mentioned that when you started out, you didn't know how to be a businessperson. Have you got that figured out now? I guess, in the beginning when I had jobs, I was making mistakes. But it's through making mistakes that I understood that I had to manage my small company in a better way. Because we don't think about it, but small companies have to handle administrative things, read contracts, negotiate budgets, and do more than just drawing. Like, speaking with people so that they know you exist, to get jobs. It's the same as any company – you need to market yourself. And, as an illustrator, there are so many other illustrators, so how do you differentiate yourself to get clients? What do you do that others don't do? Also, create a network and have different clients that you like to work with.

But also, you need to ask, is your work for these kinds of people? This kind of company? I like to make different kinds of creations, like animation, paintings and murals, digital illustration, and that means that I can have different clients. It's different products that I'm selling. 

Do you have any advice for other creative people who aren’t sure how to be entrepreneurs or how to present their worth to a client? So first, know what you want to do. If the drive is illustration, or the techniques you use, that is what is most important. If you're comfortable with what you do, you’ll know how to sell it. If you're not sure, then it's not gonna work. Because the people in front of you, they will say, “Why should I buy your posters or your skills if you don't even know how to do things?” So the more confident you are, the better you know how to negotiate. For me, I felt so confident with what I was doing, but I knew nothing.

The first big job I got was with Apple. One night I received an email saying, “Do you want to make a cover for a music playlist?” I thought, “How much money do I ask for?” I mean, I didn’t want them to think that I'm unprofessional. If I say too low, they will say it's worth nothing. I was like OK, I will ask for more than what I usually ask for, but I didn't give the right price. From that, I knew that I could have asked for double of what I asked for.

 

 

 

 

 

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What are some of the tools and processes you use to create your artworks? Everyone thinks that I'm using Photoshop, but I'm not using Photoshop to create. I use Adobe Illustrator, and I'm not using an iPad. Sorry! I'm old-school. I use a Wacom tablet, a pen and my computer. That's how I create most of the time.

Now that you are back in France and you're not feeling as isolated as you were in Denmark, why do you still continue to celebrate diversity through your work? Before I went to Denmark, I was focusing on my identity as a mixed race person, because my mum is from the Ivory Coast and my dad is white and from France. I only know the French part of me, but I don't know anything about where my mum comes from. She never told me anything about that culture, except for the food and some pictures. So to me, it's to get closer to a part of me that I don't know.

My job is also to work with people who work in different fields. So, I meet people who are focusing on the same thing as me, like what does it mean to be a black person or mixed race in France or Germany or Sweden? It could be people who are working on different kinds of projects and they contact me. So through those projects, I learn things. It's an exchange – every project is a way for me to grow and to learn. I'm not only drawing – it’s more than that. Most of the time I'm meeting incredible people that I would never normally meet, like a writer or a theatre director or people who are doing a podcast, and I connect with them and learn about a new world.

 

 

 

 

 

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See more rad stuff from Aurélia on her website and Instagram, and head this-a-way for more info about Adobe MAX.