Making Connections - Lawrence Mann

Shortly after our latest guest speaker, Tom Evans, came to the college to talk to us about being freelance and working in the creative industry I managed to talk to him for a while and we began emailing one another. After speaking to him on various occasions about trying to get connections with other artists he offered to send me the email of a professional illustrator called Lawrence Mann.

I emailed Lawrence and shortly after he responded, we spoke about a few various things, mainly about the difficulty of what its like to get into the creative industry and to get a foot in the door in companies. I explained that I really just needed someone to give me a chance and to help me to become a better artist and to reach my goal of becoming a master concept artist in my own field.
Mister Mann was a lot more helpful than I first expected he would be considering how busy he constantly is working on various projects, he told me that if it would help, I should forward him some standard JPEG images of the work that i've been doing.

When I heard that he was interested in looking at my work I was quite taken back, he seemed to be very enthusiastic and wanted to see what my work was like, I decided to muster up the courage and send him a few tester images to see what he thought about them.
Shortly after I got a reply and he commented that he really liked my style and thought that it was very unique, something that he hadn't seen in his work which is also what Tom Evans had said previously about my work also. Hearing two professionals compliment my work in such a way really was wonderful to me, it gave me an enormous boost of confidence and made me feel that I could really develop my wacky style of artwork into my signature art form.

I've been continuing to send mister Mann various bits of my work on a regular basis to keep him up to date with the work that I've been doing and hope to get a lot more feedback in the future from him as it really is extremely useful for me to hear everything he has to say about my work.
I'm also considering asking him if he would forward on some contacts to me that he knows that could give me a further insight into what they think about my work which will not only improve the standard of the art that I produce but will also help me to network and build up contacts for the future also.