FRUSTRASHOW

Elmo is another amazing artist I met online and he’s a prolific one! It inspires me that he seems to tirelessly work on honing his craft every day, producing works of great variety, such as portraits of famous people, posters, and cool pop-culture pieces like this Evil Dead illustration, which I absolutely adore as a big ED fan!

Even more inspiring is Elmo’s account of how he became a professional illustrator–especially to me who personally knows how it can oftentimes be challenging to work a job that, while you may like very much, is definitely not your passion. Elmo says in his Facebook page:

“Having worked in the public sector for many years, through debt control and telecoms and finally finding myself being made redundant, I looked at what I was doing and what I really wanted to do. Now this took a while to make the commitment of becoming self-employed but November of 2011, I decided to take that chance. It was a scary prospect and a huge risk and I had not picked up a pencil and even drawn a sketch since my collage years (being 10 or so years earlier). But within the coming months, I found my absent skills returning and my imagination coming back into full swing. I am mainly self taught from a child, and rely on my passion and inspiration from those around me, including other fantastic artists out there, movies and the fact I have a very strange mind!”

It’s clear Elmo made the right decision because his work has now reached many customers in the UK where he is based, in Europe, and even as far as the USA and NZ. I can’t say I’ll make the complete shift as Elmo did–not soon at least–but his awesome story is certainly something to think about as a fellow artist. If you want to see more of Elmo’s art and get one of his custom pieces for yourself, you can follow him on Twitter or go to his Facebook page RIGHT HERE!