PPP: Kristyna Baczynsk Talk EDIT WORDS

Notes from the talk  

Kristyna studied at Leeds Beckett, she now occasionally goes back to tutor as a nice inbetween illustration jobs benefit.
Beckett's was a multi disciplinary course which was good for her to try things but after she graduated she found it difficult "desolute wasteground post grad".
She then started doing small events she had heard of, one of which was thoughtbubble but she tried to get in as many print fairs as she could making books stickers and prints.
She considers her work profilic as it is very easily identifiable as hers, this also comes from her heritage seeping into her work.
Direct communication on the internet did help.
She started running her shop for herself and making client work, often finding that one leads to the other in a circle. When she makes work for herself, a client will spot it and want something similar so she mentioned how keeping a personal sketchbook was really important to keep processing new ideas.
Work starts in sketchbooks, entertain yourself.
Within her practice, Kristyna has always been restrictive and applied, trying to keep to a theme or a colour palette or a set number of pages etc.
She describes her work as playful but measured and how she needs those restrictions in place to keep her sanity. She taps into her sketchbook as a resource as it's often a place where ideas are created but not necessarily taken further at the time (for example a character she may have doodled will progress into something more later on and be taken for a clients work place).
She suggested sticking to the local vicinity, thats where you get your first jobs and then your ripples go out from there, first it's leeds, then it's the north, then it's UK and then it gets bigger.

"be nice, do a good job. Then they'll come back"

think in printmaking terms when she is working, always trying to figure out how something will be printed the colours etc.
Fictionalising and making sense of, the future - sci fi.  the past - folklore
"gosh comics" connecting with good people and places is important at the start and throughout your career.
She got a job after uni as a greetings card maker alongside working freelance, she found it hard to put her own work into the cards as thats not what they wanted so she really made sure that her own practice was developing alongside.
One job - another job - another job.

"always be making"

Kristyna has been nominated for lots of things, including her comic "hand me down". She has also taken part in different comic making competitions and is now widely followed on instagram by a range of creatives.

Her advice is just say yes to things, boxing yourself in and becoming a hermit is not a good thing. Although she enjoys spending a good day to herself making comics, it's important to have some communication, to share what you are doing with the creative world. It's okay to be a hermit, but a hermit that is showing people stuff. Making friends is important, it's the hardest step leaving uni is leaving the people who help crit your work so try to keep ties where you can and make others when you can.


** I found Kristyna's talk really helpful because she