I sat down with local artist Lizzie Scott about amongst other things ambition, the Jacksonville art scene and what drives her to create.
Steven: When did you first start creating art?
Lizzie: I’ve been creating art for maybe six years now, and it’s mainly been in a school environment, I haven’t really done it at all by myself, always been monitored closely, to be honest.
S: Was it pretty much always that way or at did you at some point discover it outside the school environment or did you pretty much strictly discover it in a school environment?
L: Well, technically yes. Ever since I started drawing from when I was a little kid it’s always been at school, and of course, I doodled at home and on my homework…but yeah anything major I’ve done I’ve done at school
S: and you said you started six years ago?
L: Yeah, well, I finally got good about six years ago
S: How would you describe “Got Good”? What changed?
L: I noticed that I could shade better and that I could draw from my head and didn’t have to use a reference and I was getting a lot of attention from other people saying that my stuff was good, and it wasn’t just “oh, I think it’s good” I was actually getting good feedback so I just carried on from there.
S: What medium did you start with?
L: I started with colored pencil, just ordinary drawing, and graphite, and then it moved to painting with watercolors, and then it went to oil in college, and now it’s back to colored pencil.
S: What do you think dragged you back to colored pencil as a medium?
L: I had gotten used to paint and how much it moves with a brush to where I wanted to do really fine detail but it took so long using oil, so I used colored pencil to get the detail I wanted in small areas and I just…I really liked it.
S: What do you think attracts you to it as opposed to other mediums, like graphite or oils?
L: I’m not really sure, it’s the medium that I do the most well at, like I’m trying printmaking and it involves no color it’s strictly just lines and it’s kind of…it’s making me think more, which I enjoy I like learning new things which I think every artist should do but when you learn how to use color or just colored pencil, when you look into actual real-life things like a cloud or a piece of grass…you see so much more color than just green, you see so many…even like dark blues and you’re just like “whoa that wasn’t there before!” and it’s just awesome.
S: And did you just start doing printmaking?
L: I’d always been somewhat interested in it, I did Printmaking I in the spring, and I took a break over the summer, and I went back to it this fall, so…I’m not an expert at it yet but I’m getting there very slowly.
S: How has your subject matter evolved throughout the years? Like when you first started drawing what was your primary subject matter?
L: It was usually illustrations, I have never been good at drawing people, which will change in the near future because I’ll be taking certain classes. It was always just things I’d thought of the top of my head and now it’s more of…picture-realism, so you know I’ll take a picture of some nuts & bolts and I’ll draw that, so I’ll probably end up doing a mixture of both now that I’ve got two of the skills.
S: Both illustration and photo-realism?
L: Yes.
S: Illustrations of what exactly?
L: Oh, weird things like a skull man wearing a cape…with bird feathers, you know just weird stuff. And I find that very interesting it really challenges me to be creative in an everyday lifestyle.
S: So basically, fantasy images.
L: Yes, fantasy.
S: Is fantasy something that you see yourself continuing on with or do you feel like realism would be a bit of a cutoff point for it?
L: Well, I see myself continuing with it because I took a big enough break. So with realism it’s less cartoony and more of what it would actually look like in real life and maybe even have some decent backgrounds in it now, now that I know how to do some landscapes, but it’s just interesting creating a character that literally could be from, I don’t know, a pair of scissors and give it so much quality, it makes me smile.
S: How long have you been living in Florida again?
L: Around nine years
S: How would you describe the art community in Jacksonville?
L: It’s a little bit sad, to be honest, there isn’t much art, there like the…there’s certain murals around town like there’s one at Reddi Arts, but they’re very rare.
S: I love that one [at Reddi Arts]
L: Yeah that one is good. Like you’ll occasionally see a mural every now and then, and you know the community for it isn’t huge and when there are little societies of arts in Jacksonville they’re very much to themselves and they always think they’re the best…but yeah it needs to grow a bit more, the community. It’s a little bit sad everyone’s to themselves and a bit snooty.
S: So I’ve noticed. Where would you see yourself as far as like your medium or your subject matter maybe like five, ten years down the road?
L: It’s very unknown when it comes to art because you can either succeed at it or fail at it and it really depends on the people you know or the places you go, and I was hoping that I could try and work at Pixar at some point as like a storyboard writer you know, doing some of the drawings just for early movie development so, you know that would be really cool but the chances of that happening are very slim so I’ll probably end up getting an ordinary job and doing stuff like this on the side and hopefully selling it, but It’s very unknown, I like to stick with what’s in the now and just flow with it and see where I go from there.
S: Is that a mindset that you think is pretty common among most artists?
L: I’d say maybe half and half. There are just some people who are just like “this is where I need to go and this is what I’m doing” and sometimes you can get your heart broken if that doesn’t happen, you get discouraged, so I never allow myself to think that far ahead so…I’m with the now.
S: With the now?
L: Yes.
S: And that’s what drives you and your art? Just the now?
L: Mhm, I get one piece done andI have a collection and then it’s like “well, I just have to keep going”
S: So just do it piece by piece and with individual piece you get a collection, and once you get that collection…you know, pretty much you always end up surprising yourself.
L: It’s a bigger piece of yourself.
