Today we’d like to introduce you to Jiva Capulong.
Jiva, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Drawing was something I’ve always enjoyed growing up. At school, I was the kid who would always be drawing during free time, making silly little comics that I would show to my friends or trying to draw a character from whatever cartoon or video game I was into at the time. There were even a few occasions where I won school contests, like one time I got to make a cover for the yearbook. I would eventually go on to be a cartoonist and graphics artist for my high school newspaper. Originally I was in band but wasn’t good at it, so I was really happy to get into an extracurricular better suited to my talent (special thanks to my brother for encouraging me to join the team).
Alongside school, I began posting my art online around 2010 once I got a drawing tablet. One of my favorite things to do was browse for fan art on the internet, so it was exciting to finally get in on the scene myself. Over the years I hopped around several sites, from fan site message boards, to DeviantArt, then to Facebook, and most social media platforms commonly used today. Thanks to taking my art online I was able to meet some of my best friends and even had the pleasure of meeting a few in person, so it’s been a real thrilling experience.
While art has taken a back seat in my academic career, I still actively post my art online across several social media platforms to keep growing my presence and getting myself known out there. Keeping my passion for art alive and strong alongside my education has been something I have been adamant about. I may not yet be at that point where I feel ready to pursue art as a career, but will I do my best to make time for practicing and learning to produce work that may eventually get me there.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I’m a hobby artist who enjoys doing character art, and my Intuos tablet is my tool of choice. When I was younger I was typically a pencil/pen on scratch paper-kinda kid, but when I moved to digital I was given a lot more to work with (I’ll still hit the sketchbooks for practice however). In my earlier days I mainly just drew fan art, but around high school I started taking a stab at making my own character designs. It’s like a natural evolution, since much of it involves taking bits and pieces of my favorite characters and making it my own. Some of my inspirations come from a variety of cartoons and anime, such as The Venture Brothers, Transformers, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Gurren Lagann, One Piece, and Fist of the North Star. I enjoy a good mix of action, humor, and some cool lore sprinkled in.
Sometimes I would also do silly “meme” art, and for a while I was known for drawing humorously absurd pictures of Garfield. It would usually involve drawing him with an unusual amount of detail, like giving him a scary face or a muscular body, and it’d be fun seeing people’s humorous reactions. I’ve since then distanced myself from making that a “gimmick” of mine to give more attention to my original work, but I’ll still get a kick out of doing that kind of art on occasion.
In recent years I started really getting back into developing my own creations after having been out of it for a while. I’ve had a whole trove of scrapped ideas from high school, and there were some things I just liked too much to just leave in the dark. I started rekindling my enjoyment for character design in figuring out ways to revise old ideas while expanding toward new ones. One example is “King Smiley”, a big tooth-themed supervillain-looking character that rules over the moon. Revisiting his concept in the past year, I’ve since then expanded on the Smiley Kingdom with an army of henchmen and characters like the sword-wielding Captain Grimace and the smug sorceress Princess Smiley.
For a while one of my big shortcomings was difficulty deciding what I wanted to do with the characters I designed. I’d be asked something like “I’d love to see your characters in a webcomic, what’s their story?”, and I’d just reply, “Sorry, there’s none”. And that’s a bit of a letdown. But as I’ve recently started getting an outline of story ideas written down while brainstorming with some friends, I think I’ve finally gotten a start on building a cool world and story around my characters that I would be excited to share. Maybe a webcomic would be pretty cool!
How can artists connect with other artists?
Put yourself out there! If you frequent multiple social media platforms, post your art on em too! The more you widen the places you post, the more likely people (and artists) can find you. Don’t be afraid to try and reach out to other artists you enjoy as well, tell em you like their work! I can understand that can be difficult for some, which I’ve found it’s easiest to connect with artists you have common interests in just in general. As someone who is often shy to talk, having something like shared excitement for a favorite show or video game to converse about can go a long way. Also see if there’s any local art scenes if you can! I may not be doing much art-related work in college, but I do like to hang out with the school art club when I can. I’m usually pretty reserved in-person, so I was ecstatic to find a place where I could show off my creative artsy side and make some friends while I’m at it.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
You can find my art on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram! My handle is usually “the_jieb”. Give me a follow if you like my art!
Contact Info:
- Email: jscapulong@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_jieb/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thejieb/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_jieb
- Other: http://jieb-draws.tumblr.com/
Image Credit:
The Jieb
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