Today we’re joined by Lyds. Lyds is a fantastic visual artist who does both traditional art and digital art. She loves to draw and has a very unique style. Aside from drawing, Lyds also does a bit of writing. She has a phenomenal enthusiasm for her craft, as you’ll soon read. My thanks to her for taking the time to participate in this interview.
WORK
Please, tell us about your art.
With my art, I mainly do drawing both traditionally and digitally. I’m also trying to work on a story, which may be written out or put into more of a comic form.
What inspires you?
I mainly get inspired from my friends or other artists I see online. There’s quite a few artists I watch work on YouTube which gets me thinking about what I want to work on next.
What got you interested in your field? Have you always wanted to be an artist?
I can’t quite think of anything too specific that got me into this field, I’ve kind of always been into drawing and writing.
Do you have any kind of special or unique signature, symbol, or feature you include in your work that you’d be willing to reveal?
I don’t think I have too much of a unique signature besides some of my artwork I do is all done with dots.
What advice would you give young aspiring artists?
One main thing that I would advise is to keep practicing and working on your skill as much as possible. Also, don’t compare yourself to others because we all have different styles and are all at different points of our time as artists. The only time I’d say comparing is all right is when you compare your old work with your new work, it does help to see the progress that you’ve made and encourages you to continue making even more progress.
ASEXUALITY
Where on the spectrum do you identify?
I identify as asexual, romance and gender are things I still have yet to fully figure out for myself.
Have you encountered any kind of ace prejudice or ignorance in your field? If so, how do you handle it?
The only time I can really think of where I faced ignorance is when explaining my story idea to a teacher where no one has sex for fun or for reproduction and she couldn’t see how anyone would be able to form relationships with each other. She then told me to really consider how two people would get into a relationship and how that might look and to possibly do research on asexuality. In response, I kind of just said, “Oh, I kinda am asexual so…” Besides that I can’t think of any other specific situation.
What’s the most common misconception about asexuality that you’ve encountered?
That basically I just haven’t met the right person yet and once I do I’ll change my mind.
What advice would you give to any asexual individuals out there who might be struggling with their orientation?
Don’t worry too much about having a specific label that fits you, if for now asexual or a-spec is close enough to what you think you identify as, then that is perfectly fine. Labels change sometimes and we sometimes learn more about ourselves, which result in changing a label. Just be yourself, we’re all here to support each other.
Finally, where can people find out more about your work?
On Tumblr I have an art blog (though sometimes I forget to post) called liimiim-haywaas-art and then I also post my artwork on Instagram I’m liimiim.haywaas.art. I don’t have much of my writing posted anywhere, there’s a few poems that I’ve written on my other Tumblr lyds-likes-to-write but I don’t post there too often.
Thank you, Lyds, for participating in this interview and this project. It’s very much appreciated.