The Whimsical World of Taryn Grannis:
An Interview with the Artist Behind the Lovely Little Neighborhood
April 27, 2023
YM: I have been looking over your work and it looks beautiful, and I want to ask first about where you are from and does your upbringing influence your art?
TG: I actually grew up in Kyle in the Plum Creek neighborhood. I lived there until I was like 15 or 16 and then my family moved to a little farming town in the middle of nowhere. A lot of my work is based a lot on growing up in suburban Central Texas. A lot of my houses are very similar to some of the building styles that I draw. I love florals and a lot of those are inspired by Texas wildflowers. Because I’m wanting to go into children’s book illustration., a lot of my art is very child based and it’s kind of like a natural progression of my experiences as a child.
YM: How did you become interested in art?
TG: I’ve always been drawing as long as I can remember though I actually didn’t take any art classes until I was in high school. I was a stem girl, like I wanted to do engineering and stuff and then I realized I actually hate that, and it makes me very sad, and it has a lot of math. So, I kind of switched gears, and you know I was really fortunate to have parents who encouraged that. They’re not like ‘this is a waste of time and money,’ so I was fortunate to have parents who were supportive of my artistic journey.
YM: I read your artist statement and you talk about pulling inspiration from Art Nouveau and Fauvism.
TG: Art Nouveau is very decorative, there’s lots of very ornate details. I’ve looked at the 20s style, very floral-like elegance, lots of sweeping lines and stuff. It’s one of my favorite movements ever and so I kind of drew a lot of my floral motif work from that. In terms of fauvism, that’s a bit less apparent in my work but I’m really drawn to the use of color as a very primary aspect of the composition. There’s a lot of imaginative use of color, repeated brush strokes, and texture and that’s something that I’m also very drawn to.
YM: What is your creative process like?
TG: I kind of don’t do a lot of sketching beforehand and my work is very immediate. Like for my current houses series, I have a bunch of reference photos up, and then I just kind of doodle. I don’t do a lot of planning beforehand but if I do plan it’s intensive. I will be in my sketchbook making a piece in pencil first and then I’ll recreate that on paper. When I’m working on a piece I don’t make a bunch of thumbnails and then pick from the best one. I’m just doodling. I hate to minimize my work that way, but it just happens from my brain.
YM: Your work is really whimsical and colorful. What is your goal? What do you want people to feel when they look at your work?
TG: Since my end goal is illustrating children’s books full time, a lot of my art has a sense of like childlike wonder and whimsy. I want it to feel cheerful and happy like it brightens their day. I’m super into Care Bears, I love the bright colors, the cute, bubbly shapes. That’s something I want my work to reflect on.
Starwalker, watercolor and colored pencil, 7 x 7 inches, 2023
YM: How has your style changed over time?
TG: It has definitely changed a lot. When I was in high school I was convinced that I was going to be like a comic book artist, and I was a Marvel girl which you would not be able to guess from my work now. I’m not into comics anymore but my style has changed. My work has slowly changed from this very black and white style, with lots of lines and dots, to be more fluid, cheerful, and bright. I think part of that is because I’ve been to therapy, so I’m in a different headspace than I was when I first started college. I think that reflects a lot in my work, like you can definitely tell a shift happened. A lot of my work from years ago, nobody will ever see that.
YM: How do you improve or challenge yourself as an artist?
TG: That’s been like a difficult part of my art education because we’re given assignments and you have to do the obvious. Like if we’re doing a still life, I have to draw some fruits. It took me a couple years to say ‘okay, I’m in art school I’m trying to make things that I would be happy to put my portfolio.’ I would say ‘but I don’t want to do that, and I want to make this, so how can I make what I want to make while still fitting in the constraints of an assignment?’ It’s a lot of working around rules that either someone has set for me, or I have set for myself. I do that a lot with my current series. I have a lot of very specific rules that I’m not allowing myself to break, and that’s something that has helped me keep a creative flow because it forces me to problem solve.
The Moon And Me, published in November of 2021
YM: You have a published children’s book on Amazon that you wrote and illustrated yourself?
TG: So, the children’s book publishing sphere is very hard to get into if you’re wanting to be published by an actual publishing house like Random or Harper Collins. I really wanted to publish my own book that I did all on my own. I did a lot of youtubing, and I found that Amazon has a self-publishing tool called KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). I figured out what I needed to do, and I had an idea in my head already for what I wanted to write. So, it was just a matter of writing the manuscript and figuring out what I wanted to illustrate on each page. Then, there was a whole PDF process where they tell you what you need to change to fit into the book. It was a pretty long process, but it was really rewarding and valuable for when I eventually am agented and with an actual publishing house. It was so unreal because I’ve been working on this book for like months and it was the week before Thanksgiving, I was so tired, waiting for the semester to be over, and then I got the approval email. I texted my mom and I was like ‘I have a book it’s published’ and she’s like ‘oh my god, that’s cool.’ It was something that I wanted to do to further my abilities.
YM: How much time do dedicate to creating or do you set goals for yourself?
TG: I spend so much time on art, I don’t even think I could put it into a set number of hours. Especially this semester, I’m taking all studio classes and I’m working, and my day goes from literally 8 AM to 8 PM every single day. A lot of that time is spent either researching artists or finding inspiration on Pinterest. I’ll spend a lot of time drawing and I do commission work on top of the projects I’m doing for school.
YM: You just mentioned commissions. You sell and promote your art?
TG: I have an Instagram, it’s @37angrybees and it’s where I share my art. I’ve got commission prices and I’ll do portraits and pet portraits and characters people come up with. Most of my commissions are digital art, I haven’t really sold many of my physical pieces just because I want to hold on to them. We had an exhibition two days ago and I sold one of my pieces there. I want to eventually have prints and stickers and all that stuff, and I’ve used Red Bubble in the past, but I want to eventually sell my art through myself.
YM: What do you see in the future for yourself and your work?
TG: I have my house series I’m working on for my thesis show in December. I’m hoping to expand that series to 100 pieces total, right now I have 24. In the long term, obviously I want to write and illustrate children’s books. I’m also working on getting my teaching certificate so I can teach elementary school art. That’s what I want to do as a job in the meantime because as an artist you have to balance your dreams and reality. Like yeah I want to be an illustrator, but that takes a long time and I need to have a job in the meantime. People always need teachers, so I’m going to teach for a while. That’s my goal right now.