Meet Tamara Martin | Illustrator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tamara Martin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tamara, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I always find it difficult to articulate how I ended up with an illustration business without explaining a little bit of my life, since it was this series of personal events –totally unrelated to illustration– that led me to where I am today.

I studied and worked as a fashion designer in Barcelona, where I am from, but once I met my husband, we had some options to live abroad due to his work, and without a doubt, we jumped right in. It was first Berlin and Munich, and some time later, Los Angeles. Due to all this moving, I was not able to work for some years and, right when our son was born, I felt this urgent and crazy necessity of doing something creative again so, out of the blue, I started drawing. I remembered I used to love it as a child but, somehow, I had stopped doing it ages ago. I began to enjoy it so much again that I realized I could definitely see myself considering it as a career, so I opened an online store and started selling art prints and cards with my illustrations. I took part in a few markets, where I really enjoyed interacting in person with the customers, and I also started getting some commissions for personal and editorial illustrations.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
During 2020, I experienced a little bit of a style crisis. I had been stuck for months in a style that, I felt, did not represent me fully. Since I did not know how to break with it, I just kept drawing in that style and soon found myself trapped in this frustrating vicious cycle of never being fully happy with my work. It was during Covid so my son’s school was closed and we were all home. He was six, at the moment, and he started drawing during those days. All kinds of things, but especially portraits of people. He would just grab a ballpoint pen and get to work: eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, all the teeth… boom, everything! And I was like: Wait! No pencil sketching? No erasing? No proportion consideration? Nope, none of that. It was just the pure joy of drawing: as raw and unfiltered as it gets. And I loved it. It really blew my mind so much that I did this experiment in which, for three weeks, I would let myself draw anything I wanted, in any media, and in any style. And it helped me so much to redefine where I wanted my work to go next that I can’t recommend it enough.

You never really know where your next lesson is going to come from. It is crucial to always be receptive, and also, to be aware of what is it that prevents you from fully expressing yourself. We are so overexposed to a crazy amount of visual stimuli during our days that, in my case, I found it really hard to discern what I liked (so many different things) from what I wanted to express with my work in particular. It is easy to feel confused with all the possibilities and create this mirage of expectations that does not let you find yourself clearly anymore.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
This last February marked our tenth-year anniversary living in Los Angeles… Where did time go?! It really seems like it was yesterday that we were landing at LAX with a couple of suitcases. When we first arrived we spent the longest time in Venice, and I remember riding my bike to Santa Monica by the beach almost every day so, my tour would probably begin strolling around the Venice Canals, Abbot Kinney and Main St. For coffee and a pastry, I like the patios at Gjusta or The Rose and the amazing omusubis from Sunny Blue are definitely a must. We would check some exhibitions at the Bergamot Station Arts Center, walk the Palisades Park during sunset and head to Cassia for dinner. If I am around DTLA, I like to visit the Broad and the Los Angeles Public Library, stop for a quick lunch at the Grand Central Market and head for a drink to any rooftop like Ace or Perch. At night I would probably go to Koreatown for dinner, Korean BBQ at Baekjeong is one of my favorites.

We recently moved to Orange County. Laguna Beach has been one of my favorite places since I moved to California, so I am really enjoying my time exploring all these Southern California coastal towns that I still don’t know so well. First, we are going on an early hike to Top of the World because the views of the Pacific Ocean are amazing, and then stopping at Hightide Coffee for a matcha latte and a burrito breakfast. After that, it’s beach time and any of the coves in Laguna will work because the water is so blue and crystal-clear in all of them that it is hard to choose just one. I like to walk around downtown in the early evening and head to Heisler Park around sunset time, it always makes me feel like I am on vacation on some faraway island. Then, we are probably finishing the day with dinner at Carmelita’s.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Any person who has encouraged me, in any way, to keep pursuing my creative path has a very special place in my heart. Especially my family, who has to endure my incessant doubts about color combinations 24/7! The truth is, creating something –whatever discipline it is that you work in– puts you in a quite vulnerable space. You create something out of nothing, out of yourself, and you send it to the world and see what happens. So when somebody likes what you created enough to make it a part of their lives, by hanging it in their living room or by sharing it as a card with a friend, it is just the best feeling and I am so thankful for that.

Website: https://www.bytamaramartin.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bytamaramartin/

Other: Online store: https://society6.com/bytamaramartin/

Image Credits
Bernardo Mellado