pic by qert

Dan Morelle: Please introduce yourself.

Drew Anderson: Well, My name is Drew Anderson, I’m from Oregon and live in Portland. I consider myself to be a creative person and try to share that with others.

Dan: You mainly upload illustrations on flickr, do you do that professionally?

Drew: I wouldn’t say that I quite make it professionally as an illustrator yet. It’s certainly something I’m passionate about and I consider drawing like breathing… you got to do it. I generally upload illustrations cause it’s easier and less personal then photos. Also my digital camera just broke. I generally like to draw at least an hour or two everyday. Lately most of my work gets done at a coffee shop.

Dan: Starbucks?

Drew: oh hell no! Portland is a great coffee town and I prefer to go to places that serve Stumptown coffee. Its nice to head out and draw but it takes me away from working too big, I would like to stay at home and make some larger pieces.

Dan: how long do you generally spend on individual drawings?

Drew: I think that one took about 45 minutes. It’s hard to keep track of time. That’s the only framed piece I gave to my girlfriend. I had it sitting at home for a while, wanted to add color. Just a little. I ended up adding the gold heart and then framed it and gave it to her.

Dan: What sort of pens do you use? That looks like a very thin line.

Drew: I use a .25 rapidograph pen. I have about 4 of the pens. I prefer to use the Rotring pens as they don’t leak as much. The lines are solid black ink too and they have a magical texture to them. It’s almost like weaving thread together. I like the thin line stuff as it generally looks way better than my larger line work. Most of my drawings are pretty much stream of conciousness with a little thought to composition and content.

Dan: Talk about this picture, where did the photo come from?

Drew: The old photos…. I first started drawing on some old photos that I had found. Someone was throwing away a whole box of photos and papers from the 50-70s. One of the first photos looked really good so I decided that older photos would be fun to work on, then I found the cabinet cards and really like working on them for various reasons. I wanted to work on something that could easily be displayed without spending a fortune on frames…also.. the idea of this really old photo with art directly on top is kind of crazy.

Dan: the spaghetti soup, you say you don’t plan that?

Drew: lol. paghetti soup, is a good way to describe it. I don’t really plan it but, it is a good way to help direct composition with the old photos I attempt to show the energy of the person in the photo almost as if you can see what this person is about and where they came from and where they are going. It’s somewhat trying to show what they are about subconsciously.

Dan: What is MoHDI all about?

Drew: MoHDI, is an acronym for Millions of Hundred Dollar Ideas. It’s my depository for creative ventures and ideas. After realizing how many projects I start and don’t finish and how many wonderful funny and creative ideas I have I thought that it would be good to start compiling these ideas in one spot.

Drew: My popcorn feeder is probably the most complete of any of my projects and I’ve been regularly posting ideas, inventions and projects there for almost 2 years. I initially thought the popcorn feeder would be great for lazy people. Sort of based on a joke that the worst part of eating popcorn is having to reach down, grab some popcorn then reach up and put it in your mouth. It’s funny cause after I thought about the design of the feeder and was about to post it on MoHDI, I decided to do a search if anyone else had built such a thing. Turns out someone had:

This was also the case with my spoon invention.

Drew: Some person had the idea like 100 years before me and even got a patent on it!

Dan: Are you hoping to have a few hundred Million Dollar Ideas one day?

Drew: The name Millions of Hundred Dollar Ideas… is sort of based on “hundred dollar Ideas”… I consider a hundred dollar idea as one that takes less than $100 to implement and in one year you can possibly make $100 off the idea. The more you have the more you will make. In the process of coming up with hundred dollar Ideas… I have to say I’ve come up with a good number of million dollar ideas too. Most of those I don’t write about.

Dan: Are there any other projects you would like to talk about?

Drew: Right now I have a lot of projects under way….Most I got started on through either MoHDI or Flickr. I’m currently working on illustrating a children’s book, I have been working on that for a while and would love to keep producing children’s books. I also have a business book I wrote that needs to be finished. It needs a ton of work but someday will be done, it’s called “How to make hundreds in as little as one to three years”.

Dan: Tell us more about the children’s book.

Drew: Well, I don’t want to give the story away too much but.. it’s the first in several I hope to work on. Basically it’s about the dangers of taking a bath. It’s a lot of fun to work on however, difficult for me to stay consistent with characters and in style. It’s way more difficult to illustrate something that needs to have a consistent look and feel. People and perspective are somewhat difficult for me although it doesn’t really matter for art and ilustration as long as the final looks good, you can really draw whatever and however you feel like, I guess it doesn’t even have to look good unless it’s for something you hope people will eventually want to buy.

Dan: Tell us about these engraved Moleskines.

Drew: I’m fortunate enough to live in the same town as a person I met through flickr who does laser engraving on Moleskines and laptops. He picked me as an artist for his artist series of books. It’s so cool to have my work etched on the cover of a Moleskine as I’ve been using the them myself for a while, I like the look and feel of the things. They have a consistency that is great too. I love looking at my shelf that has a collection of various sketchbooks.

Moleskine recently contacted me and wanted to display some of my sketchbooks at some book fair and trade show things. I know they plan on displaying it at the London book fair and at some event in Frankfurt. I wasn’t sure of the details. The hard part was deciding what to send them. I was going to send several books but a lot of my books had million dollar ideas in them or characters that I’ve been working on for a while and I didn’t want someone stealing my ideas. So I ended up sending the first Buy my Sketchbook
sketchbook.

check out www.buymysketchbook.com for more info.

Dan: What’s Buy My Sketch Book all about?

Drew: One that was made with the intent on sharing sparked from MoHDI. The idea was to produce and sell entire sketchbooks as a work of art. So as I would go through the sketchbook I would scan in pages and let people make offers on them if they would like then give the original book the the person who has the best offer. The idea also was to get anyone involved that wanted to be. So I have other artists doing the same thing too. My thinking is that while the first book may not sell for a lot the next one will probably sell for more, then more and more. Hopefully I can just sit around and draw and not have to worry about money. The first book took many months to finish. The second I’m guessing will be completed in about a month and a half from start to finish.

Dan: Its an auction thing right? how is the bidding going?

Drew: I think I have about 20 pages out of 80 to complete. My bidding system is pretty bad. I just have people email me or post a comment on the site. As the site grows I will need to fix that! The current high bid is my $200 and dinner.. It’s my Mom!

Dan: lol

Drew: I like the idea that my mom gets the first book and when I spoke with her last she was like..”You sent my book to Italy!” I had to remind her that it wasn’t her book just yet. I think when the book returns she will probably end up with it. $200 isn’t a lot for a book like that. It took a while to complete, although when I started this project, I didn’t intend to make money of the books right away. It’s an investment in time. It would be nice to be known as that guy that makes and sells sketchbooks.

Dan: How do you come up with new ideas?

Drew: They hit all the time. The more you practice the easier it gets. Generally by observing surroundings. Ideas are constantly coming, the process is somewhat hard to explain but, I could really come up with a fun idea about just about anything. It’s kind of about thinking abstractly and humorously and observing what people need or don’t need. I’m probably not explaining it well.

Dan: Give us an example.

Drew: ok… I’m not sure if I wrote about it on MoHDI or not yet but I have numerous ideas for wallets, one is a spring operated moth that pops out of your wallet when you go to pay for something. A more practical wallet idea might be to have a headband wallet or perhaps one with a lock on it would be pretty funny. Maybe just a small bag with a money symbol would be a nice replacement for wallets in generally. hmm.. I could probably go off on wallets for a while. I guess that’s part of the process; taking one thing and coming up with loads of ideas for it that then sparks other ideas. Crotch wallet might be a good idea… cause if you ever get robbed, chances are the thugs wont want to be digging around in your crotch…maybe the butt wallet would be more suitable or perhaps a wallet that shoots money out of it not only to pay for stuff but also for protection too. Lol. Stop me when you get tired of these ideas.

Dan: okay, they’re all very cool. who are your favourites on flickr?

Drew: Now that I’m thinking about it I’ll probably be coming up with more wallet ideas all day! I like all sorts of people on flickr, it’s hard to say. You can really notice some folk that stand out and are professional artists, like Dan May, Danny Glix has some hot work too. I have numerous artist friends on flickr too as well relationships I’ve built with others I’ve never met and people that follow me too. I like to follow those who follow me. It’s fun to see what others are doing. While looking one day I saw Hal0Hal0 had a piece that was art on photos…It was cool to see then I clicked the photo and saw that it was inspired by me! Wow… A nice head trip there. I like Hal0Hal0s work a lot. Although I don’t know much more about the person other than the work. Perhaps he’s a wealthy artist or more likely he’s just struggling like me and most people doing art on flickr.

Dan: any others?

Drew: I have so many people on flickr that I like to follow and look at, it’s easy to spend hours checking out what people are up to and doing. It’s almost like spying in on peoples personal life’s Photos, art and more. As far as artists go Brittlestar and Meredith Dittmar are both good friends and it’s cool to see what they post on flickr. Scrappers always has some fun stuff too. I also love seeing what the Library of Congress has and posts. I have a good number of contacts and it’s so cool to find nice surprises when they post something that I can really relate to. I heart flickr.

Check out more of Drew’s work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mohdi