An Interview With Blurb Books
Last month, I got to interview with Aer Parris from Blurb Books about my book, Safe. It was so cool to get to talk bookmaking, OCD, and self-publishing. Thank you to Blurb for having me! You can check out the interview below. Thanks again to Blurb Books!
https://www.blurb.com/blog/behind-the-book-with-mckenzie-young
Fall Freelance Roundup
It’s true what they say about freelancing, it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. But amazing clients and a supportive audience make all the difference. This year I got to work on some of my dream projects as well as continue to collaborate with amazing people to tell their stories. Here’s a look at what we did:
Willamette Week
I’ve been working with Willamette Week for a year and a half nowl! I’ve learned so much in the art department and the fast pace keeps things interesting. This year I’ve been able to create all sorts of editorial illustrations, ads, and a few more cover pieces! Plus, I got to jump in as art director and work with amazing photographers and illustrators for a few weeks. I’m so proud to get to be an active part of Portland’s journalism scene.
I was also awarded Best in Illustration: First Place by the Society of Professional Journalism for my work at WW in 2022. I’m honored to be counted among the many talented awardees this year.
Revino
Revino is creating a sustainable future for the wine industry through their refillable glass bottles. They’ve been a client for a few years now and I’ve gotten to see them through from initial branding and logo creation all the way to their recent events and press kit as they launch. They’ve gotten some great press recently and I’m so excited for them and the future of their company.
Check them out:
www.revinobottles.com
Friendtales
This year my second graphic novel was released by Friendtales . These books (written by Emily Martin) follow Oscar, a teenager living with OCD. This project has been so amazing for me to be able to work on. As a person with OCD, seeing more resources enter the world for kids and teens makes me hopeful for the future of treatment. I’m honored to play a role in that.
NOCD
NOCD provides OCD treatment and support on a widespread level. There are therapists available through them in nearly every state. I got to partner with them during the summer to create an illustrated look into their services. As someone who’s actually used their services, it was awesome to get to work with them.
Check them out here: www.treatmyocd.com
Travel Dundee
This year, Travel Dundee has been hosting Vino & Vibes, a third Thursday art and wine event in Dundee, Oregon. They reached out to me to illustrate a map of the event that was both informative and fun. This project was a dream as I’ve always been a bit of a map nerd.
Check them out here: www.traveldundeeoregon.com/third-thursday
Saalfeld Griggs
Saalfeld Griggs - a business law firm serving clients in Oregon - has been an amazing design client for over a year now! We’ve collaborated on both print and digital materials for their events and social media needs. It’s been awesome to have such a long-term relationship with a client and I’m excited for the future of our work!
Check out more here.
Visit their website at www.sglaw.com.
Personal Work
I’ve been proud to release a few self-published projects this year, starting with my zine, Home. Home is a collection of comics, previously only published on Instagram, as well as writing and artwork that cover my life with OCD. I’m so proud of this work and have been looking into further publishing opportunities.
This is only a small selection of the client work I’ve gotten to create these past few months. If you’d like to see the full breadth of my work you can head to: www.mckenzieyoungart.com. A huge thank you to my clients for continuing to trust me with your creative needs! If you’d like to schedule a time to talk through a project, you can contact me here:
Fun extras:
Thanks for reading this newsletter! I appreciate you and your investment in my work. You can access fun free downloads, playlists, and more on my website as a thank you.
In Response to the New York Post's Article on OCD
By now many people in the OCD advocacy community have read the article put out by @nypost last week positing deeply inaccurate and harmful takes on OCD. Beyond the deeply misinformed understanding the writer has of OCD, the article also used this fake understanding of obsessions and compulsions as a justification for the author’s bigotry.
Hi everyone. This is a sentiment I wanted to share on Instagram. Unfortunately my post got hidden and taken down a number of times. So here it is:
Having OCD does not make you dangerous. I am not afraid of you.
By now many people in the OCD advocacy community have read the article put out by @nypost last week positing deeply inaccurate and harmful takes on OCD. Beyond the deeply misinformed understanding the writer has of OCD, the article also used this fake understanding of obsessions and compulsions as a justification for the author’s bigotry.
I grew up hiding OCD from most people close to me because of the fear of being misunderstood. Finally telling people and being fully known by those around me was the most powerful experience of my life. It was only because of accurate resources that I was able to articulate my experience and receive help.
Willful ignorance like this is not only deeply harmful to a wider understanding of mental health and it’s complicated nature but can and will cost lives. People with OCD are 10 times more likely to die by suic*de (@madeofmillions ) and many don’t even get a chance to understand what’s happening to them or access a proper diagnosis. This also effects marginalized and underrepresented communities in an even more damaging way.
I’ve tried to write this post a few times and just got so frustrated and angry that all I wanted to say was a big fu to the author. But that would do a disservice to this conversation because obviously there are still deep and painful misunderstandings about OCD - an extremely common and debilitating mental health condition.
If you have OCD please please know that you have done nothing wrong and you are worth every bit of space you take up. There are resources out there for you:
@treatmyocd
@iocdf
@ocdfriends
@theocdstories
And many more
I’m going to put these illustrations on my website in a free section and you can download them and print them, share them, do whatever you need to do to believe that you are wonderful. I’ll put an optional donate button and anything that comes through will be going straight to the OCD orgs listed above. That’s all I’ve got for now. Stay safe y’all.
-McKenzie
What is a Freelance Illustrator (What do you even do?)
I often get the question “what exactly is a freelance illustrator?”
It’s a tough one to answer since I’m still figuring this whole freelancing thing out. What I can say is that I’ve learned very quickly that the more skills an artist can learn, the better off they’ll be.
My first freelance illustration client was an internship at Edwards Educational Services. I was on a team of other interns creating illustrations for their publication, City Kidz World Magazine. Each week we were assigned a story written by a child reader of the magazine. The goal was to read the story and create an accompanying illustration. It was my first time creating a piece of artwork for a publication and I remember sitting in front of my iPad, too nervous to start drawing. Looking back, those pieces look nothing like my work now but I am so thankful for the learning experience and the opportunity to create imagery for heartfelt children’s stories. The number one thing I learned from that job was the thing that made me the most excited was getting to tell a story or interpret a story with visuals.
Soon after that internship, I began another internship at Soma Games. This position was initially a concept illustrator. But I soon found that the opening that was really needed was a marketing graphic designer. I was asked to jump into that role instead and ended up learning most of the skills I needed on the job. That internship taught me the value of brand identity, good digital ad design, and the very beginning of my interest in UI. But illustration still remained my number one love. And it was hard to imagine combining all of those skills with my fine art degree into something meaningful. I felt that I had to choose design or drawing.
From that internship-turned-contractor position, I moved on to my alma mater to fill an urgent UI designer role. I was apprehensive about the application as I didn’t have much experience in UI and had just recently begun to feel confident in my design skills. Still, the hiring manager encouraged me to apply, saying that what they wanted most was an artistic eye and the ability to learn everything else. So I took the leap and got the job.
Now, after two years at that position where I learned all about UI and the role illustration plays in it, transitioned to the marketing department, and even got to draw a mural, I realize that for every job I’ve ever had in the design space, no matter what the title, at the heart of it I was an illustrator. Illustrators act as shape shifters in a lot of ways, carrying a growing kit of skills that allows the artist inside of them to adapt to any medium. I have painted with HTML and CSS, designed with the click of a mouse and the stroke of a pencil. But always, I come back home to the silly characters and wide open spaces of my art practice.
So what exactly is my job? I can create a logo or design a digital ad campaign. I can code an email, animate a gif, or edit a website. I can paint on a wall or on a sheet of paper or a screen. But those are just the skills I’ve gained through hard work, years of practice, mentorship, and amazing employers. Above all else, my job is to tell a story with imagery. And I absolutely love it.
Have a project you’d like to collaborate on?
I’m a freelance illustrator….how did it happen?
The first time I found out that illustration was a possible job I could have, I was a senior in high school.
We were talking about future career paths in class: what we wanted to pursue in college and how we saw art fitting in. It was my 6th period AP Art class and I was one of five students who had enrolled. Our teacher sat across from us explaining the different requirements we would have to meet by the end of the year to submit our work to be graded. She explained what we might want to work on depending on what type of Art and Design track we were hoping to pursue later on. Among the list was illustration.
My plan for the longest time was to become a writer. I had searched university websites with the keyword “English.” I had written my heart out on various papers and stories and blogs. I was ready. But art kept pulling me in. I would draw in class nonstop, draw at home when I was supposed to be doing homework, draw in the car. My free time was often consumed with art making. I just didn’t really think I had what it took to be a professional artist. And aside from that, the ambiguous question that looms over every eighteen year old about to sign on the dotted line of student loans filled my thoughts: how will I make money?
We all know the starving artist trope of course but no one knows it better than our parents - the people who want to see us grow up to be stable adults with an income (and are planning on turning our bedrooms into workout and craft rooms). So on the first day of university, when I called my mom and told her I was going to pursue Studio Arts (aka Fine Arts) I could tell by the slight pause and slow “okayyy” that she was imagining all of the possible outcomes of my schooling. But that job of ‘illustrator’ kept ringing through my head. To draw for a living (and maybe write my own stories too) sounded like a dream.
Then classes started…
University art classes were hard and I was behind - I could tell. In drawing especially, I felt the gap. One day during Freshman year, about three months after that initial call with my mom, I called again. This time I was crying over some tough feedback and considering the possibility that I might not be able to actually be successful in this major. I was sitting on a bench staring at the bad score on a piece I had worked so hard on. I don’t remember what my mom said to calm me down but I do remember leaving that conversation thinking that this would be a turning point. You want to be an artist so do it. You don’t have to be the best, you just have to catch up. But catch up to what?
I knew from the beginning that I didn’t really have as much of an interest in hanging my work on a wall as I did in feeling it on a page. I wanted it to be touched, dog eared, wrinkled. I wanted it to be shoved into backpacks and carried around and loved. I wanted to close the distance between the viewer and that big white wall of framed pieces. That’s where I learned about the tricky, cavernous space that illustration takes up in between Design and Fine Art. I had always imagined that it was just an accepted subset of Fine Art - that you could glide between galleries and less formal spaces with ease. But I learned that these distinctions felt sacred to some artists. As a result, illustration seemed to be the ugly duckling - claimed by neither traditional artists nor designers. To be an illustrator, I realized, was to have a foot in two worlds.
You don’t need a full recap on my time at University. Suffice it to say I had amazing mentors and professors who believed in me, friends who pushed me, and crazy late nights in the art building eating dominos pizza and painstakingly drawing still life assignments. And at some point, I realized that critique is meant to help not hurt. That was important.
In November of 2021 I decided to make the jump to full time freelance work and it felt a bit like that first leap into a Fine Art Major. There was no guarantee that it would work, no surety that I would be good enough to succeed. But I wanted to try - want to try. High School me deserves to know whether or not this dream is possible.
Now my days consist of talking with my wonderful clients and splitting my time between multiple projects. The projects themselves range from drawing-heavy to design-heavy. But I like having a foot in each space. It’s refreshing. And the gap seems to be closing every day. Sites like Instagram and Twitch have opened up space for illustrators specifically - where work can be shared with ease. So now I’ve fallen into a bit of a routine. I pour myself a cup of coffee in the morning, sit down with a planner I’m trying desperately to make myself use, and hash out my day. Some days there’s tons of work. Some days I twiddle my thumbs a bit and then work on a personal project. Often I have to listen to the peanut gallery in my head which is mostly just me shouting doubts at myself. But I have to be creativity. It is a part of me that is somehow even more powerful than all of my raging anxiety. So tomorrow, I will get up, drink a cup of coffee, and continue forward. And I’ll think about high school me. Right now she’s surreptitiously drawing in a sketchbook during Biology. I hope I’m making her proud.
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