Danniel Campbell, Artist & Author~Part 1

Welcome, illustrator and author Danniel Campbell, to my site. And thank you for being willing to be interview. You’ve illustrated my updated edition of “Just Claire” and also “Sincerely Claire” You have a website where people can go to view your illustrations. And more recently, you have published a novel, “Penelope” and a short story, “Charlotte”. Readers can put their cursor over the title of these books and right click Open Hyperlink and see Danniel’s book covers illustrations on Amazon.

Okay, Danniel, let’s learn a little about you and your publication adventures.

At around what age did you show interest in illustrations, and writing?

I believe I started illustrating when I was in grade school. I used to make comics of my original character Tuff Man and his escapades with my favorite childhood heroes like Batman and the X-Men. As for writing, that came much later. Although mom told me my teachers from junior high said I was good in English. It was my freshmen year in High School that I wrote stories and poems so I could read them aloud for an audience. I just loved being dramatic and the attention it brought. I wanted people to feel the whole piece from beginning to end.

Danniel, I can almost picture you before your class and dramatizing your poems and stories.

Was there a defining moment when your creations happened? If so, tell us about it.

I’m not sure what my defining moment was for when I first started drawing, but I know what it was that got me back into it. It was really more of a small series of moments. Midway through 2017 there were a couple of coworkers of mine who drew cartoons at work. Overtime they improved so much they looked professional. God, unbeknownst to me at the time, was using this to wake me from an eight-year-slumber from drawing.

I took up drawing again and kept it up well into the following year challenging myself with portraits of people and animals, and even a Biblical depiction of Jesus’ conquest of the Devil, the Anti-Christ, and their army in Revelations 19. On the latter quarter of that year God blessed me with an opportunity to prove that I truly was a professional illustrator. Though I was no longer critiquing other writers’ chapters from the email loop of American Christian Fiction Writers, I was still receiving emails from another loop where authors asks for advice or help with their work. One of them asked if we knew of any illustrators that could do a book cover for her. My initial reaction was to decline, but I felt the Lord pushing me to offer my services. I did. I showed her all the work that I had created for nearly a year. I get the chills as I write this realizing this was God’s plan all along. The author was impressed with what she saw and took me on to do my second ever professional job. The rest is history.

I’m so very glad we connected so you could illustrate my two books, Danniel. I’ll be hiring you as we’ve talked about before for a book cover of a middle grade novel titled, “Brother Sheffey Loved to Pray: A Circuit Preacher who Enjoyed His Honey”. I certainly look forward to that project!

Was there a certain person or persons who encouraged you and believed in your creative capabilities? If so who?

My mom, Jean Ann Williams, Barbara, Martha, Robert Priest, and my pastor. When I started writing and drawing again, I often showed my drawings to my mom and my Pastor. Both of them believed I could’ve used some more schooling to sharpen my skills. I considered making fine art a career again either as a portrait artist or art therapist. Believing I needed a professional artist’s opinion to judge whether my work was of a professional or amateur I sought my former college professor, Robert Priest. He was amazed at my work and that I was good enough to call myself a professional. However, he believed that finishing my unfinished associate’s degree in graphic design would make my resume look that much better.

I did seek to enroll in classes to finish my associates in graphic design, but I lacked the funds and the time to do it. Around that time I had completed a couple of manuscripts that I actually wanted to publish. A close friend of mine referred me to his aunt Martha to proof read my book. After she mailed my manuscript back to me she told me that she just couldn’t get the protagonist out of her head. After I gave a couple of the chapters of the manuscript to Jean, she said it had potential and that I should give it to one of her editors, Barbara, to look at it. When she sent the chapters back to me she said I had a good story to unearth. Giving that story to her to edit made me grow so much as a writer.

Editors are top notch important!

Did you ever struggle with discouragement about your creative gifts that God gave to you? If so how did you overcome it?

After I had graduated college in 2007, besides publishing a horribly edited manuscript and finishing an art work I promised to complete to a former art professor, I had a drought in both writing and illustration. As a whole I sort of ran away from both. I lacked a lot of self-confidence convincing myself sub-consciously that I really didn’t know how to do anything. I tried going to school for evangelism and nursing, but the funds for both pursuits ran out, and those weren’t careers I was particularly interested in any way. During that time, I sometimes thought of going back to school for writing and illustration. But I didn’t want to get into more debt. I doubted that I was truly any good at either of those skills since I left them alone for so long. I was convinced that I couldn’t make a decent living off of them.

However, after being inspired by some fellow artists at work, I took up drawing again. I started with a still life I felt was going to challenge any skill I had left – a glass jar of pine cones 😊. Honestly, the challenge was so great that I felt like giving up during the first hour of drawing it, but after persevering techniques long abandoned in the recesses of my soul resurfaced helping me improve each hour I devoted to that piece. Once I had finished that I sought other pieces to challenge my skills such as a symbolic depiction of Jesus defeating Satan and the Anti-Christ Revelations 19 and portraits of other’s lost loved ones. Getting back into this talent brought me a joy I hadn’t had in years. Though I was moving the color pencil on the Bristol with my hand, I realized that what came onto that a Bristol board was from a talent and that didn’t originate with me.

While working on the illustrations I also started getting back into writing stories. Wouldn’t you know that the same feeling I had when drawing was right there when I wrote. It was then that I realized that not drawing and illustrating, whether for a career or a past time, was depriving myself of a way of experiencing and worshipping God. I no longer wanted to do without it.

Oh, this is fantastic, Danniel. We close here until next Saturday for the final post about Danniel Campbell. Thank you readers for joining us today.