Feb 28, 2020
“Craft your style carefully to own it!”: Shanee Benjamin, Catapult Artist for February 2020
“Find a unique niche and rock out! Understand that your illustration style is yours.”
“Find a unique niche and rock out! Understand that your illustration style is yours.”
“I love that I get to read vivid stories, collaborate and connect with thoughtful and kind people, and learn new things all the time.”
“It’s not enough to consider the content—how am I presenting the content?”
“Always meet your deadlines, do good work, and be easy to get along with.”
“Because Catapult is multifaceted, because our content spans so many subjects, it seemed the Catapult Artist program would really be an extension of what the magazine was already doing.”
“Refrain yourself from throwing things away. Even if you think you’re going nowhere with what you’re creating.”
“When you’re a kid you’re not sure if you don’t know something because you haven’t been taught it or because you’re not supposed to know.”
“I think, in pursuit of truth, science and religion still have to wrestle with the strictures of human knowledge, error, pride.”
“The narration style feels very conversational to me. I liked how second-person really tries to make the reader part of the story as well.”
Learning to apply my curiosity wherever it’s needed has made my illustration career more fun and maybe more successful, too.
“I slowly connected the dots that nearly all my friends—no matter what continent we had been on—had experienced some level of sexual violence.”
“The themes of social justice, the magic of water, and the power of queer love to create a different world—these are themes that I return to again and again in my writing and my life.”
“Working for myself is all about balance. Although illustration is my career and passion, I still need to have a life outside of art-making.”
“Some stories just flow out of you and you try to keep up as you write them. This story was not like that.”
“When you feel like you have no power in a relationship, withholding becomes one of the only ways you can maintain the illusion of agency.”
“Inspiration came from the stupid pencil jar our family had when I was growing up.”
“It started with a voice—the young narrator telling me about her name.”
“For me, I guess fairytales are where I am simultaneously most at home, and most at odds with the world around me.”
I think what I love about illustration is that there are so many ways to challenge myself.
“‘Illustrator’ is just the easiest catch-all for many jobs—which again, I’m rather restless so it’s worked out great that I never get bored!”
