New Friends: Enbodie

by Steven Kasprzyk October 25, 2021

We've been fans of Enbodie's work for a while now. Their use of color and line work swallows us whole, making us want to live in the Enbodie world. They recently took a moment to let us pick their brain about their work and process.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is forest, I’m a nonbinary human, I was born in Louisiana and moved / grew up in Los Angeles California. Currently I work as a graphic designer at a small creative agency, but I will be starting tattoo school in 2022 to begin my journey towards becoming a tattoo artist!

I’ve noticed your interest in tattoo on your social. What started that love?

I can’t remember a time in my life that I didn’t really love tattoos, I remember wanting to get a bunch even at a young age… I never expected to get into tattooing myself though, the plan was to become an animator but life happened and I realized that I wouldn;t be happy in that type of job. After searching for my next goal for a bit I started noticing how many people were commenting that my art would make great tattoos. Then some of my friends asked me to design tattoos for them and once I saw how my work looked on their skin I knew I had to learn to tattoo folks myself.

When did you get interested in the arts?

I really can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t drawing, my mom says I started doodling at around 2 years old, and my entire family was super supportive of that, bought me art supplies for my birthdays and such. Growing up I was inspired by cartoons more than anything, and would religiously watch shows like Ren & Stimpy, courage the cowardly dog, futurama etc… but I think the most outstanding moment of inspiration for me artwork was going to the MOCA ecstasy exhibit when I was around 12 years old. I was Immediately drawn to Murakami's paintings, his psychedelic color palettes & characters (particularly Mr.DOB) captivated me with their playful yet sinister auras.

How do you like your process / workflow to go?

My workflow process is pretty simple, I first sketch out my designs freehand, sometimes on paper, sometimes on my tablet in photoshop. Then I take that sketch into Adobe Illustrator & check the geometry & compositions of my design. I usually have to take it back into photoshop after that and re-sketch out the designs so it is more accurate to the geometry I had laid out. Then I bring that sketch back into Illustrator, overlay it onto the geometry & make the final lineart with vectors. Then I take some time to decide on a color palette, fill in the flat colors (no shading / gradients yet) I find illustrator is the easiest place to do that because you can swap entire palettes very easily. Then is the most fun part - the shading and final details, which I do in photoshop! Though the vector line art part of this process takes a very long time and I’m going to start experimenting with doing all of the lineart in photoshop so that I can get work done at a faster pace!

How long does this process usually take? Your work seems pretty labor intensive

Generally it depends on the amount of detail that's involved in whatever I’m working on so something like a flash sheet can take anywhere between 8-16 hours.

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Honestly I don’t even like laying in bed when I'm sick & get annoyed that I have to sleep at all sometimes haha, I only do it because I can’t handle the all-nighter zombie brain I get if I don’t sleep. But I even fall asleep thinking about what I could be doing instead of sleeping, so I think once my eyes open in the morning I honestly can’t wait to get back to whatever I was doing the night before, sometimes that's work, sometimes it's a videogame, or trying to figure out a new poi trick that I got stuck on.

What do you love most about art?

Hard to pick, can I say two things? The first would be how art allows both the artist and the experiencer of the art to communicate with each-other & themselves. I am so grateful for the connections I’ve been able to make with other people because of my art and theirs. The process of making my own art is also extremely therapeutic, it allows me to communicate and work with more subconscious parts of myself. There’s so much in my head that's hard to communicate in any other way, and I’m sure I’d be completely spiritually constipated if I could not express myself through my work.

The second thing I love about art is that anything can be art, it all depends on it’s observer. Duchamp’s Urinal comes to mind of course but it's also a constant reminder on the power of directed perception. I can change the entire world if I choose to interpret it differently. The earth, the solar system, the entire universe becomes a museum, but better, less sterile and more colorful.

Any friends you want to encourage our readers to check out?

Most definitely! Here’s a list of artists that I love & inspire me: