Artist Spotlight :: Jordan Hill

Welcome! Every Tuesday and Thursday Tonia Jenny, the 21 SECRETS Creative Director & Course Manager, interviews one of the talented teachers in our 21 SECRETS program for an Artist Spotlight.

To never miss an interview be sure to sign up for blog notifications located at the bottom of this page and CLICK HERE to check out past interviews. Enjoy!

Hi Beautiful Soul!

21 SECRETS Face Time opens in 25 days!

The artist I want to share with you today—Jordan Hill—is a wonderful storyteller. It’s only been through our work together on 21 SECRETS Face Time that I’m getting to know Jordan myself these last several months, but I can vouch for her being a storyteller because I’ve followed her on Instagram for quite a while now. I love that she has merged her love of story with that of illustration and I really love that we all get to benefit from what she’s learned, through her Face-Time lesson, Fragments of Self—A Journey in Faces.

Join me in learning more about this artist who loves continually pushing herself out of her comfort zone.

From what era of your life up to this point, would you say you learned the most about your authentic artistic voice?

There have been several turning points for me throughout the years in terms of developing my artistic voice.

I would say that the beginning of this era of development started when I was around fourteen years old and a freshman in high school. At that point in my life, I made a decision to focus more intensely on the storytelling aspect of the things I was creating. I was very into fiction writing when I made that decision (and I still am), but that concept has taken on many different forms since then, with the idea of telling a story remaining a constant.

This constant was only further encouraged about two and a half years ago when I committed to improving my drawing and illustration skills. The illustration and storytelling have merged with my art journals, allowing me to incorporate faces, figures and words in a way that I wasn’t doing before.

Is there a certain new-to-you material that you just can’t get enough of?

I tend to go through phases in terms of what I am currently using in my artwork; it also varies depending on whether I am working on illustrations or my art journals (though a lot of the time I do like to blur the lines between these things).

In terms of my pure illustration work, I’ve been leaning towards digital programs more and more, since I like the effects I can get with them. I have plans to merge these digital illustration efforts with my art journals, most likely through printing off things I’ve created digitally and using them as collage fodder.

I’ve also found a new love for oil pastels.

What could you bravely commit to, here and now, that would expand you as an artist?

I would commit to continuously pushing myself out of my comfort zone and doing things that make me feel uncomfortable.

This is something that I actually did commit to in 2018, and the growth I’ve seen in myself as both a person and an artist has been astounding. I applied to things I didn’t know if I’d be accepted for, reached out to people I wasn’t sure would contact me back, did craft fairs where I offered my art for sale and even made a public commitment to creating a graphic novel.

Not all of those things panned out, but a lot of them did. Regardless, I learned something from each and every one of them.

If we were lucky enough to see your workshop’s “outtakes” or “bloopers” video, what would be the scene?

To put it briefly, I talk to myself a lot. Speaking out loud allows me to sort through my thoughts when I don’t fully understand them; if someone else is in the room, I’ll talk to (at) them, but if I’m in a room by myself, I just talk to the air.

Our house is also located fairly close to an airport, so there’s a lot of waiting for planes to go overhead.

Where will you be and what will you be doing five years from now?

I have a hard time speaking in absolutes when referring to future matters, but unless something physically happens that prohibits me from doing so, I know I will still be making artwork in some form.

What form this will be in is yet to be determined. As a creative person, I have made many shifts throughout the years, but the desire to make things has always remained. It’d be cool if volume one of my graphic novel was finished, though.

As someone always inspired by Jordan’s Instagram posts…

I can’t wait to see what she does with her new love for oil pastels! And I think most creatives can relate to talking to ourselves, right? I bet all of us answer back as well!

💜 Tonia

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About Jordan Hill

If there is any word that encompasses most accurately what I do, it would have to be ‘storyteller’. Whether it be my art journals, illustration work, short fiction, or full-length novels, my intention is always to tell a story.

I have been creating in this way for as far back as I can remember; I actually still have stories I wrote and illustrated when I was six years old! In recent years, I have made a more active effort to make a career out of doing what I love through selling my art online and helping others along their own creative paths. This particular aspect takes on many forms, including classes, YouTube videos, and an Etsy supply shop.

Jordan teaches Fragments of Self – A Journey in Faces in 21 SECRETS Face Time

In this lesson, we will be looking at how you might already be expressing yourself, and then we’re going to dig a bit deeper into how you can make it more intentional. We will also be working with a variety of different supplies in a loose, intuitive fashion, in an attempt to determine which supplies are most indicative of our own creative processes, as we create an art journal spread together!

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