Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanity Diaz.
Hi Vanity, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I got started as a full-time illustrator by surprise. Throughout all of my school years, I followed music with a heavy passion and drive, thinking that’s where my career path would take me. A lot of people don’t know that about me, which is still rather funny because most assumptions are that I was always really into illustration. I was, but I didn’t realize it until much later on in life.
While I was obsessed with music as a possible career choice, I also had comic books that I felt were more part of my personality rather than a career path to follow. See, around the 5th grade, my teachers notified my parents that I was struggling with the state reading tests. If I didn’t pass the state tests for reading, I would stay behind a grade. To this day, I think my dad saw this as more of an opportunity to create another nerd in the family and then to help me read but of course, he says otherwise, so I guess I will have to believe him.
My dad gave me my first comic book of Spider-Man. Don’t ask me which one it was or what issues because I have no clue to this day, but I do know that I found my first love in comic books. As I got older and went through the rest of my school years, I started going through some rocky moments. However, throughout all of those hardships, I clung to comic books and music the most. Those two things alone helped me ground myself during the hardest times of my life. For that reason alone, I never saw illustrations as a career but more as a safety net and part of my personality. Part of who I was and more of an outlet for me.
Once I graduated from high school in 2014, I found my first job as a customer service representative for QuickBooks. I worked there for four years, and the highlight of my occupation there was my first mentor, Ricardo Ortiz. In 2016 I was trying to figure out what I truly wanted to do in life. One day my friend Ricardo noticed me doodling some facial expressions of my coworkers that were very well beyond frustrated with this job. He mentioned that I should take myself more seriously, and he got me to draw more. We would spend lunch breaks with him teaching me how to tell if a face is uneven and how to draw something as simple as an eye correctly. The more I spent time learning the basics, and I wanted to take myself more seriously.
At the end of my job experience at Quick Books, I could feel all of the happiness from drawing, and Ricardo helped light that spark. In 2019, I started my new job opportunity at a company called Paylocity that I truly adored. I loved the people, and the job was worth the opportunity they gave me, and everything about that job was truly a blessing. I was content until I realized that no matter what position I had, I would never be truly happy if someone else other than myself were my boss. Someone else would always determine when I could take a break. How long that break can be. When I can eat and how much time I can take to eat. When I should rest and wake up, as if God heard my exact thoughts, later on, that day I saw a post on Instagram from an illustrator named Dominic Glover. The post said, “Are you looking to take your art more seriously? I’m looking for people I can work with and mentor to get you to the next level. If you are interested, DM me.”
This is where you can insert the sound of alarms because I followed Dominic for a bit but never saw him post like this before. On top of everything, I saw this at 11:45 pm EST, and I thought, “There is no way this man is awake! He is a licensed artist for DC and Marvel! He won’t have time to reply to me!” Spoiler Alert, he replied to me after I messaged him. The next day he archived that post, and I didn’t see him post it again for a while, which made me feel like maybe I was supposed to see it when I did. The next day Dom set up a call with me, and we went over what my goals were and what I wanted out of the mentorship. I was clear; I wanted to be a full-time illustrator and level up my art to go to comic conventions just like him and be a licensed artist one day. Most importantly, my goal was for my art to give hope, courage, and peace to someone who might need it in their darkest times, just as Spider-Man did for me so many years ago.
That brings us to the present day; I quit my job after a year and a half of working with Dom and being mentored by him. I started up my website, went to comic-cons and met some fantastic people, released my Patreon to help other artists in any way I could, met some other like-minded artists, and to this very day, almost two years later, I can now say Dom is one of my closest friends. I don’t know if my art has given hope, courage, or peace to anyone yet, as Spider-Man did for me in my hardest times, but I know that I won’t give up until I can give that feeling back to someone else.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I am very blessed to say that my dad was my biggest cheerleader from the very beginning. He always strived to be super detailed when recognizing my progress every step of the way and still does! When no one was cheering for me, my dad had the pom poms out screaming to make up for the silence. For every person that didn’t take me serious enough or didn’t give me the support, I needed I always got it from my dad.
In 2020, I found myself feeling miserable around certain people and feeling so alone in a household of many. The people and energy around you can definitely take a toll on you and your ability to grow. If I didn’t have my dad or the love of my life being the sunlight in the darkness, I probably wouldn’t have bloomed to be where I am today. I realize I don’t talk about my struggles too often, and I think part of that is because I try to continue looking forward. After leaving behind so much negativity, hurt, and darkness, I find it easier to look at where I am now and smile. When I face some adversaries, I look back as a reminder of how far I’ve come and what I left behind.
Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t mean that I didn’t notice the silence from people in the past and that it didn’t affect me because it did from time to time. However, many of the struggles I went through, from not having support to not feeling worthy of this career path to not feeling good enough, were always more of a mindset that I felt I had to improve. I realized all of the people that were cheering me on were doing it for a reason. My best friend Angela, Sasha, the love of my life Brandon, and my dad all cheered in the silence because they believed in me. They could tell me till they were blue in the face I was amazing, but if I didn’t start believing them and their words, only I could blame myself for shutting them out and being paralyzed by fear.
As for the atmosphere I used to be in constantly dragging me down, well, when I couldn’t escape it, I had all of my friends and new artist friends I met along the way to lean on when I was too weak to stand on my own. After many years of being picked on for reading comics and mangas in school, I finally found my tribe of supportive and loving friends.
So I genuinely couldn’t be more blessed to have moved on from a dark situation and finally have the space and ability to take that leap of faith as a full-time illustrator with so many cheering me on every step of the way.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I create stylized fan art ranging from Disney to DC to Marvel to Studio Ghibli films. I recently started working on my art style and adjusting to a more painterly technique, which means using fewer black bold outlines for my drawings instead of giving the images a more unrestricted and loose feeling.
I want to say I’m known for the best drawings ever, but realistically I think all artists have a lot to learn, and we never truly stop learning. So I guess what I’m known for right now and hopefully forever is the community I have created while learning to be a full-time illustrator.
When I took this leap of faith back in 2019, I told myself I wanted to be an inspiration and connect with people to show them being an illustrator full time was an option. Somehow, along the way of learning how to draw and being transparent with my growth, I created this amazing community of artists of all ages on Instagram.
When I would go live on Instagram, I just wanted people to join to put their day-to-day stress aside for a moment and enjoy art. Then, as I started to be more consistent with my live streams, one of my followers named, LilCrazy, said the vibe of my live streams felt like a lounge where people could enjoy themselves. So whenever someone joined my live streams, he would put in the chat “Welcome to the Vanity Lounge.” I think that’s what I’m most proud of right now and probably will be forever—giving artists a free and safe space to ask questions and a place where they can be cheered on for their milestones no matter how big or small the achievement.
I think that’s what sets me apart from other artists, I genuinely don’t have anything to hide, yet I have everything to give. In just trusting the process and being okay with trial and error (for the most part, haha), I have created a genuinely loving community that I adore. I don’t know what I would do without my following and supporters, the Vandits, and all of their support behind me. However, I know because of the Vandits, I’m always more eager to keep learning and to take time to perfect my craft to the best of my ability.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Oh, man. Well, the first one is something my dad used to tell me all the time, “Other people’s opinions of you are none of your business.”. When wise words are said to us as kids, we don’t really know how to put them into practice in our lives. However, I have learned to utilize it now, especially in 2020, during my most challenging times. If you want to do something, do it. What other people may think of you isn’t any of your concern or something you should worry about because it will be you at the finish line at the end of the day. It’s only going to be you who worked hard to get to the finish line, not other people’s idea of what you could be or what you are. It’s a hard thing to remember, but whenever I find myself wondering what others think of me, that’s what I remind myself.
The most important lesson I have learned as an artist has probably been two things that go hand in hand. First, “Give yourself mercy and time. Don’t be afraid to take that leap of faith.” I’m a massive perfectionist, and I think I strive so hard to be a good illustrator and artist that I find myself wanting to perfect even the newest things I try out for the first time. When I get caught up in that mentality, I forget to give myself some mercy and time and realize it’s okay not to be good at new techniques the first time. Also, it’s okay to take time to allow yourself to mess up, so you know how to correct yourself.
The second part of that is to be okay with taking leaps of faith that may scare you. Of course, I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow, be a full-time artist, and launch your website in an hour. However, I am saying it’s okay to take a year or two to save up so you can quit. It’s okay to want something more than your 9-5 job that may have you feeling stale. It’s okay to research your dream career and work toward it, not knowing the final outcome. I believe if something has passion, drive, and faith, you learn how to make it work. That’s all being a full-time artist is, learning from the trials and errors in your leaps of faith.
Pricing:
- Prints – $20.00
Contact Info:
- Email: thevanitydiaz@gmail.com
- Website: www.vanitydiaz.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/vanitydiaz
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thevanitydiaz
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/vanitydiaz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5C3tKBty5FNFB1LLjMv1xA
- Other: www.patreon.com/vanitydiaz
Image Credits
Angela Nicole Photography
