Special Q - Talk of the Town - Interview with @organduo

in #qurator5 years ago (edited)

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Who's The Qurite TALK OF THE TOWN?


Qurator and @goldendawne present~ The Qurite Talk Of The Town



Are you; or do you know of another Qurite that has accomplished and achieved a goal or dream that goes beyond all thoughts of every day life?

Maybe you know someone who was recently accepted into an special program? Maybe you're a photographer and you sold some of your images to a stock photo website? Or perhaps you know someone who had a book published?

WAIT! What's that? Someone had a book published? WHO? Who was it?

Our very own...


@organduo

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Give us a little background on your work?



I like to describe myself as an organist who draws. I’ve been playing pipe organ professionally for 25 years but drawing more seriously since 2015. My mom is a graphic artist and still teaches art at the art gymnasium. My dad was a painter and also an art teacher. So visual art was important when I was growing up.

How did you discover your love for drawing?


This summer I visited my mom who lives in Klaipeda, a 3rd largest Lithuanian city on the Baltic Sea. It turned out that she kept my early drawings from the times when I was maybe in a 6th or 7th grade and she took me to summer art camps with her classes.

I liked drawing horses and airplanes very much. They seemed to me very interesting subjects to draw from every angle. But, as often happens when we grow up, my love for drawing was replaced with my love for music. I stopped drawing but never stopped making music.

I think my re-discovery of drawing was inspired by my online activities. In 2012, I started writing a blog Secrets of Organ Playing (https://www.organduo.lt) where my wife Ausra and I are teaching organists from 89 countries how to play the King of Instruments. Little by little I understood the importance of having some visual material which would go along with the text. But the problem was that I’m very independent and want to control my own creative process. So instead of taking photographs that were made by other people, in 2015 I started making some drawings with some ideas about organ playing written down as text. Somehow I understood that playing the organ alone wasn’t sufficient for my creative self-expression. I also needed words and pictures to share my ideas with the world.

This was the origin of my visual work but it’s not what I do now. Now, together with Ausra (@laputis on Steemit) I’m creating comics about the adventures and screw-ups of Pinky the piglet and Spiky the hedgehog and their imaginary friends.

It started as some doodles on our wall calendar where every morning we would ask each other what kind of animal we are today and draw them for each other. This was our way to say “I love you” to one another.

Because Ausra and I love these animals very much it seemed natural to try our hand at comics. Finding Steemit through reading an article about it on Medium by @stellabelle was a great outlet for our work because of built-in supportive community and contests.

What helps you focus when drawing or creating new comics?


Drawing in itself is an activity which lets me focus, lets me immerse myself at what I’m doing for an extended period of time. I feel like I’m in the zone when I create.

Do you have a favorite “place” to work that inspires you?


My medium is pastel and I’m drawing in a pocket notebook. Because I can carry my art with me wherever I go, it’s not so important for me to have my favorite place to create. I literally can do it anywhere. I’ve been drawing in my church, at home, in cafe, in a gym, in a concert hall, even in the movie theater. But probably the most frequent drawing place for me is my armchair in our living room, especially when our TV is on...

When did you decide to publish your work? And where are they available for purchase?

Since I was drawing every day since January 2018 and posting my Pinky and Spiky comics to my blog on Steemit, after a while I noticed how quickly my notebooks are filling up. At first one, then two, four, six. Now I’m in the notebook No. 8. I thought that as these comics are archived on Steemit, not too many people will find them in the future.

That’s why I decided to publish these collections of my comics in paperback and Kindle versions. I used Kindle Direct Publishing platform to self-publish my books and make them available on Amazon. You can find all of my books here at my Amazon author page:

https://amazon.com/author/vidaspinkevicius

It’s a very fast and simple process. If you have the material at hand, you upload the document to their platform, fill out book details, format the cover, set the price and hit “Publish”. In as little as a day your book will be live and ready to be discovered by your potential fans worldwide.

If you are a blogger on Steemit, and not necessarily create visual work, you can still publish your blog posts using KDP as a collection of articles. In a way it’s repurposing your work and giving it a second chance. If you write every day, I’m sure you will have enough material for several books every year.

What is the most rewarding thing for you in regards to creating the comics?


Because my parents were creators, I have this inner drive to create too. In audio, text and pictures. When I do all three activities, I feel complete. So drawing comics helps me achieve equilibrium. I feel calmer when I create, less grumpy. I haven’t skipped a day without drawing since I started my Steemit blog but if I did, I would imagine I would be very difficult to be around with…

Also I have to say that since pastel and crayon seem like a medium that kids tend to use, I feel great to remembering to be a child again through this activity. It’s visual storytelling.

When Ausra and I create our silly Pinky and Spiky comics, we laugh at each other, we laugh at our imaginary friends, we laugh at our frustrations and problems too… It is healthy to laugh. We should do it more often.

How supportive has the Steemit community been?


After a couple of months since I started postings these comics on Steemit, I discovered #artstorm contest the @deemarshall is organizing daily. It’s a great way to get support from the community and grow your following, if you engage in a meaningful way with other creators. I’m very grateful to Dee that she is doing this work that matters to so many people because as we all know it is next to impossible to grow organically simply by posting quality content on Steemit if you don’t participate in some kind of community. Now she’s offering all kinds of contests, for people who are interested in drawing, coloring or simply guessing colors. Without her daily efforts Steemit community would be much less creative.

Also I’d like to mention here @cobmaximus who is organizing weekly #steemit-webcomics contest. His creativity in coming up with funny themes also is important to me. People who love drawing comics should definitely check him out.

Also Ausra and I started noticing how enthusiastically people react to the silliness of Pinky and Spiky. We too began organizing our weekly Pinky and Spiky Drawing Contest so that other people could have fun in drawing our beloved characters and win some prizes of course.

But all of our prizes wouldn’t be possible without the daily upvotes we get from @qurator and its community. We feel that the team of @qurator is doing such a crucial work at discovering quality content which otherwise wouldn’t get attention it deserves from the Steemit community.

And let’s face it, without attention most of these excellent authors would get frustrated and sooner or later go create someplace else where their work is valued. Therefore, @qurator’s work is indispensable at well-being of Steemit ecosystem. And by delegating a part of our SP, we are happy to be a part of it too.

We all know writers have “writers' block”, but do you suffer from anything similar when thinking of the next episode for your comics? If yes, how do you work through it?

The way I come up with the theme for my next Pinky and Spiky comic strip is very simple. Very often I check what’s the theme for the daily #artstorm contest and create based on that particular theme.

For example today, as I’m writing these words, the theme is “Spells” because we are in the Halloween week. I think I’m going to create a comic strip where Pinky the piglet, Spiky the hedgehog, Cornelius the purple cardinal, Dietrich the mouse, Betsy the butterfly and Victor the spider are casting spells on each other.

For a comic strip to have the potential of getting the laugh or at least a smile, it needs to have an element of surprise. The easiest way to do it is to have a twist at the end. When a reader feels that the character should say one thing, it’s best to go to the opposite direction.

I simply start drawing these animals and they start to talk to each other. And when they do, I have to stop them because they won’t shut up…

Also creating comics is like a diary to me because I go through my days by always looking for material to draw upon. I try to notice and write down things that I do, see and hear. If you do that, inevitably, something interesting or funny will come up. If you have a family member, listen to what they say and write down exactly those words in a comic strip. It’s amazing how a seemingly boring, everyday conversation will be elevated into new artistic level through pictures. The legendary cartoonist Lynda Barry who made a big impact on my work believes that comics can be created from any type of writing, fiction or non-fiction, business paper, a how-to article, PHD dissertation or even a report of a committee meeting.

So creating comics now is a vital part of my life now. When I create, I feel fully alive. And since I haven’t created my daily comic strip today yet, I better go do it now and share it on Steemit. Follow me at @organduo if you don't want to miss any of them.

Thank you @goldendawne for your thoughtful questions and I hope that the silliness of Pinky and Spiky will put a smile on your face.

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If you know someone who is a Qurite and deserves to be the Talk Of The Town, send me a message on Discord (@goldendawne#7044 ) and let me know! ALL recommendations will be look into <.center>

We are all here to support each other and if you like and appreciate the hard work @organduo put into his book go show him some support. Upvote and resteem or even buy his book. If you know someone who is a Qurite and deserves to be the Talk Of The Town, send me a message on Discord (@goldendawne#7044 ) and let me know! ALL recommendations will be look into

The Qurator project is brought to you by:

@scrooger | @boontjie | @goldendawne | @ewkaw | @ackhoo | @brumest | @stresskiller | @blacklux

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Congrats on the books @organduo!! Also thanks for your support! 😊

Thank you! You are very kind...

"Drawing in itself is an activity which lets me focus" yups, I agree with this quote. Why ? Because I have learn islamic caligraph when I am in high school and proven when participate in contest. Btw thanks for this word and congratulation for your two book @organduo. God bless you.

Thank you. I'm glad this idea resonated with you...

Many thanks to Vidas for mentioning me. Artstorm would be nothing without participants like you and Ausra :)

Participating is always a few steps bellow from organizing...

To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

Hi @qurator!

Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.650 which ranks you at #126 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.

In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 274 contributions, your post is ranked at #21.

Evaluation of your UA score:
  • You've built up a nice network.
  • The readers appreciate your great work!
  • You have already shown user engagement, try to improve it further.

Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server

Congratulations! @organduo

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