When I started working as a graphic designer, I didn’t know that I wanted to draw portraits. It was a weird combination of a lot of different things. I have a little bit of a photographic background where I have drawn and photographed in the past. I also have some background in illustration and a passion for it. I’ve done work on a few websites, and that’s the type of work I was drawn to. After working as a graphic designer for a year or two, I realized that if I continued to draw portraits, I’d just probably end up doing that more and more. So I’ve been trying to make portraits on the side, just for fun, using all that stuff in my head right now… I do it to keep my sanity. I mean, I do it because it was fun.
[laughter]
I don’t do it for money. I do it because it’s fun, not necessarily just because it’ll make me money… I’m really just doing it for the fun of it.
Nolan: Why do you do it?
Kreischer: I think it’s something very… like I said earlier, part of being a professional artist is being able to look at things in a different perspective, and that just means you can look at art in a way that you might not like. Or you can see the work differently.
Nolan: Or you can do it with fresh eyes.
Kreischer: Well, you could look at it in any way that you’d like. It’s a challenge to try to do a portrait of a friend, or a former lover, and be able to make a new impression or two there. And to look at someone’s past, for me to do that it’s really a challenge. It isn’t one that I’ve tried to do more and more, even when I was a kid. It wouldn’t do to take pictures of myself with my grandmother any way. But, it’s something you have to take on… If you can’t do something like that, then it’s really tough. I think that it’s a really difficult process to do that. To really try to get the perspective of that person really right. And, to do it in a way that you can see the things in it that you don’t actually see in the photograph itself.
Nolan: Now, the most interesting thing about you is that you’ve done all of this stuff completely independently, so how exactly do you
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