The Pairabirds

Tabitha Brown, Artist

Yearbook Nancy

PCC: Tell us a little about yourself. 
TB: My name is Tabitha Brown. I am an illustrator and designer from Illinois, USA. I live 45 minutes north of Chicago. 

PCC: What do you create?
TB: I create illustrations using digital hand-drawing and scanned papers. My favorite subjects are nature, women, and girls.

PCC: What made you want to become an artist?
TB: I have always enjoyed drawing and crafting. After graduating high school, I knew I wanted a career that allowed me to constantly create art. I decided to go to the American Academy of Art in Chicago to study illustration.

PCC: Tell us about your process. What materials do you use?

Amethyst

TB: First, I sketch out a general idea on paper. Next, I flesh out the design in Adobe Illustrator using my Wacom drawing tablet. Drawing tablets allow me to replicate the flow of my pencil/ink sketches (and, it makes deleting mistakes easier!). 
If I need to add textures or scanned papers, I take the illustration created in Illustrator into Photoshop. 

PCC: What Advice would you give to someone who wanted to make a living as an artist? 
TB: It takes a lot of tributaries to fill the lake. Meaning look for as many different sources of revenue to make your income. For me, this means selling on Etsy, doing commissions, using print-on demand services, and several other ways to sell my work. Another bonus of having plenty of tributaries is that when one becomes a trickle or completely dries up, you have sources to cover you. Similarly, be on the look out for new streams and keep a lookout on any blockage and pollution in your old streams. 


PCC:  What are you passionate about outside of your art?

Balancing Act

TB: I love reading books with women as the main characters. Graphic novels, historical fiction, memoirs, mysteries, science fiction, and on and on! My love of reading, I think, translated into my enjoyment of foreign films (I love reading subtitles!). 


PCC: Anything else we should know?
TB: If you visit Chicago/Chicagoland area: get pizza, a Chicago-style hotdog, and hot wings. Don't trust the weather. It may be a balmy 70F on Monday, but a blizzard on Tuesday.

PCC: How do we find you? 
www.thepairabirds.com
www.etsy.com/shop/thepairabirds
twitter.com/thepairabirds
www.pinterest.com/thepairabirds/


Other work from Tabitha Brown that we love:

Night, Mountain

Je T'aime

Yearbook Grace

Bird Woman

Feminist

Free

Lookout Birds

Prism 4

The New Girl

All artworks are the property of Tabitha Brown and may not be copied, reproduced or altered without her permission.