Artist Proof: Kim Herbst is a freelance illustrator who relocated to San Francisco, CA from Brooklyn, NY. She’s half Chinese and grew up with a pair of stone fu-dogs in her living room. Kim attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and graduated with a BFA in illustration. As a game artist, she has created designs and flash animations for companies such as Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, and Mtv. She currently works full-time creating designs and animations for applications used on social networks such as Facebook.
Artprojekt: Please give us a brief intro about yourself, your art and where you are currently located.
Kim Herbst: I’m an illustrator originally from the East coast. I went to school at the Maryland Institute College of Art for Illustration and then lived a bit in Brooklyn before coming out west to San Francisco for a new job. I do artwork and Flash animations for games on Facebook as my full-time gig, then do illustrations and graphic design in any of my fleeting spare moments of time.
AP: What plays a bigger role in your artwork, where you live now? or where you were raised as a child?
Kim: Definitely where I was raised as a child. My mom’s Asian heritage really slips into my work stylistically.
AP: Describe your artistic style in 5 words or less.
Kim: Organic Graphic Novel.
AP: What inspires your art?
Kim: Human beings. We’re such complex, crazy things, affected by everything around us.
AP: Do you remember your first experience of making art.
Kim: I definitely remember drawing a lot, as early as age four. Arts and crafts in pre-school. My mom also doodled a lot and I wanted to draw like her.
AP: What was your most recent experience of making art.
Kim: I’m currently working on a show that will be in LA. It focuses on three films from the 1980s. I also create artwork and Flash animations everyday for my full-time job in the web-games industry.
Artsprojekt: Who’s art are you digging right now? Who do you want to give a shout out to?
Kim: I love my former classmate’s work, Ray Jones. His brushwork always makes me shiver. Also Yoko Furusho, I had the pleasure of seeing her artwork in the same show as mine this past weekend!
AP: What are some art related things that you cant live without? Tools of the trade, events etc.
Kim: My 11”x6” wacom tablet, definitely. I use it every single day. I love checking peoples illustration blogs, sketches, artbooks, anything I can get my sights or hands on from people I’ve known in college, or my idols.
AP: What motivates you to get out of bed every day and create art?
Kim: My paycheck. Ah, I kid, I kid. I create artwork because I feel I have to. If I don’t, my hands seem worthless or useless. They actually feel like they itch if I haven’t made anything. It’s sort of compulsive at this point, I guess. I’ve gotten to the point that if I don’t draw, I feel guilty for some reason.
AP: Do you listen to music when you work? If so, name a few of the tunes you rock out to.
Kim: I listen to really weird, various things. If I’m really in the zone, I listen to nothing at all which some find insane. Depending on my mood, I can go from the Beatles, or Zoe Keating, to anything popular at the moment(on the radio), or Japanese or Korean pop stars. Pandora and Grooveshark have become good friends of mine.
AP: When you arent making art, what do you like to do? What are some of your obsessions or hobbies?
Kim: I like writing but that ends up tying into creating artwork (for potential graphic novels etc), so I guess playing video games seems to be a hobby of mine now. I also enjoy cooking and baking to get my mind off of things!
AP: As an artist what are your thoughts on social media and the internet?
Kim: I think the majority of people have only stumbled across my work via only the internet. It’s a love-hate relationship between us. I love that people can find my work and enjoy it. I hate that people can potentially take my work and use it where ever they want, even with explicit warnings not to.
AP: If you had the ability to time travel, what advice would you have for the artists of the future?
Kim: Don’t forget how to draw with a pencil, if you do digital work. Dabble back into the traditional, old-tried-n-true artisan works. It makes you grow stronger as a person.
AP: Tell us something about yourself that Google doesn’t know about (yet).
Kim: I used to draw all over the backs of my math-tests in middle-school. When done with the test, I’d flip the paper over and there was a blank sheet of paper in front of me, so what else could I do? I had one teacher who grabbed them if she felt I wasn’t paying attention, crumbled up the paper, and then tossed them in the wastepaper basket to ‘set an example.’ I started drawing inconspicuously on the backs of worksheets and tests after that.
