Lauren K. Cannon (aka Navate) interview - 2011

Name : Lauren K. Cannon (aka Navate)
Place of birth: New Jersey, USA

Hi Lauren, please, tell me something about you....about your personality and your daily life.
I’m a total hermit. Very introverted. I don’t understand people who need to talk to their friends every day. I also live in my head constantly. As a teen, I guess all the other girls were busy thinking about boys but I was thinking about strange lands and impossible creatures. My fashion sense is pretty dark and eclectic, and I have a herd of cats. I graduated college a few years ago and now I work from home. My neighborhood is in a rural, wooded area of southern New Jersey—everything is about a 20 minute drive from my house. It’s very quiet. So my daily life is pretty dull. Wake up, have tea, putz around on the internet, exercise, then work on illustrations while drinking more tea. I also teach online at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, but even that I do from the comforts of my at-home office/studio with a cat on my lap.

Are you self-taught? Or did you attend college?
I did attend college, but I consider myself self-taught. I’ve been drawing since I was a kid and became serious about it when I was 14 or so. Shortly afterwards my father (who loves all things tech) bought me a Wacom graphics tablet; from there I taught myself how to digitally paint. When I went to college, I majored in fine art but choose my school for its academics. The art program wasn’t that good and had very little focus on foundational skills; I had to learn my skills on my own through trial and error. I also only worked traditionally during school. All my digital work was done in my free time and so was all of my most art rigorous study.

Do you believe in ‘talent’ or is just daily practice of drawing shapes and forms?
I hate the word “talent”. It always comes off as an underhanded compliment to me because it disregards all of the years of struggle and study involved in becoming any good. I truly believe anyone can learn the technical side of the trade if they dedicate themselves. But it’s more than just drawing shapes and such… it’s about learning how to see differently, because until your eye is developed enough to see color theory, light, and form in the world around you, you don’t really understand how all those things work. And that’s how your work gets better… by finding new ways to observe and interpret, then translating that to your technical skills.

I know that you are able to paint with many different medium, in traditional and digital painting.. What is your favorite medium and why? Must an artist reinvent him/herself everyday?
I love digital. I can’t give up on traditional painting or pencilwork, but my heart definitely lies with my Wacom tablet. I think it’s mostly a comfort thing—digital is the medium I’ve work in the most, and learned the most with. It’s spoiled me. I get very testy when I work in oils the process of laying down basic colors takes minutes rather than seconds.
I don’t think an artist needs to reinvent themselves constantly. You don’t want to stagnate, but I think as long as you’re always searching to improve yourself you’re going to be fine.

What dark artistic passions or obsessions do you have or see in your work?
I’m very obsessed with mythologies, dreams/nightmares, human psychology, monsters, parasites, and the darkness and brutality that is inherent in the natural world. Nature is a very unforgiving place, but I don’t think that means it has to be ugly. People often tell me my work is beautiful but disturbing, and that’s what I try to convey. So the recurring themes of bones, dead birds, tribal dress etc. are all homages to that philosophy.

I love that particular mist in your artworks that creates a unique atmosphere ..and that spots on the skin of your characters that look like a kind of lace on their faces and their bodies..How did you come up with these ideas? is there a narrative running behind your work?
Yes, there is a huge narrative behind some of my works. These are my original characters from my personal world; the lacelike skin texture is actually a type of magical rot that some of my characters are afflicted with. I’m not sure where the idea came from. Probably from my love of veins and certain types of horror makeup. I also just love playing with skin texture.

“Rhumii”…What or who are your inspirations for this subject?
Ah, that’s an old image… at the time it was just an aesthetic creature design exercise with a color combination that I thought would look cool. The character Rhumii is still around, though he looks very different. Perhaps I’ll paint him again one day.

Name something you've done to further yourself as an artist that you thought wouldn't be successful but was, and something you thought would be great but wasn't.
I second-guess myself and put myself down all the time, so pretty much all my endeavors have left me surprised when they’ve been successful. But the top one was probably my first commission from Peter V. Brett, who at the time was unpublished but has gone on to becoming an internationally best-selling author. He tapped me to make some ward designs and a character portrait for his website, and even though he told me Del Rey had bought his debut novel, I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then the book, The Warded Man, comes out and it’s a runaway success. Fast forward to today and Peter remains my most loyal and important client. He’s been so supportive of me. I never could have anticipated that first commission would lead to such a great relationship, or open so many doors for me.
Something I thought would be great but wasn’t… um, art school. If I had to do it over again, I’d either have done more research and gone to a real illustration program, or dropped out altogether halfway through. Not only did my school not teach me things I needed to know, it also left me in a bitter stint of art block that last for nearly a year after I graduated. So much wasted time…

What question do you hate being constantly asked about your work? ☺
Any question that asks for a detailed step-by-step guide to painting annoys me. Some people ask for really minute details… my brushes, my pen settings, my canvas size, how many layer I have, how I blend. The basic process is pretty much the same for most painters; the details are personal style. And none of it is going to help you paint any better yourself. And good tutorials aren’t going to hold your hand; they should teach you how to understand their subject matter in a way that you can use the knowledge in your own work, rather than just copying the examples. Basically, there is no magic bullet to becoming a good artist. So any question that asks me for that secret trick or tip that will solve all their problems makes me sigh a bit.

What are you plans for your future career?
Get better! I’m still new to the industry; I’m very young and only just breaking in. My plans are to keep going along this path I’m on now until I am working with the big publishers doing book covers. Maybe one day in the future, when I am established, I dream of making money off my own IP, but for now I’m content just becoming one of the industry’s respected fantasy illustrators.

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