Finding beauty in desolation with Caroline Clark
Scrolling Caroline Clark's feed is the digital equivalent of flipping through a postcard rack at a dusty roadside gas station in a desert long forgotten by time.
The Colorado Springs-based illustrator's work celebrates the beautiful desolation of the American west, using texture and vintage print aesthetics to create otherworldly interpretations of real places.
We sat down with Caroline to talk about building a business around a love letter to the wilderness, the value of doing everything by hand in an increasingly AI-saturated industry, and how texture became the secret ingredient in her work.
So who is Caroline Clark, creatively speaking?
I am a digital illustrator based in Colorado Springs. I shifted to full-time digital illustration from graphic design after realizing it was the part of graphic design that I enjoyed the most (and maybe was the only part I was really any good at).
You launched Caroline Clark Designs in 2018 while living in the desert. What was it about that landscape, and that moment in your life, that made you finally start sharing your work?
My husband and I had just moved to the desert of southern New Mexico where there were no jobs for someone with my degrees (music business and masters in divinity, lol). It was the first time I’d ever lived anywhere that looked even remotely like that, and I couldn’t believe how inspiring somewhere so “desolate” was. I had taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator in college and had just begun messing around in Procreate, and I decided that I would get really good at digital art. I loved how many possibilities came with proficiency in these programs. I could make something that looked like it had been made 50 years ago. The ruggedness of the desert almost gave me permission to do this? The combination of the subject matter of the west, the colors, and the grittiness of my work came from that time. If I had still been on the east coast I definitely wouldn’t have created the same kind of work.
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I’D EVER LIVED ANYWHERE THAT LOOKED EVEN REMOTELY LIKE THAT, AND I COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW INSPIRING SOMEWHERE SO “DESOLATE” WAS
Your work has this flat, graphic quality with a lot of warm texture layered in. Walk us through how a print actually gets made from first sketch to final file.
I usually start with one, two, or several reference photos that I collage together to create the composition I want. Then I do this weird, cross-eyed thing with my eyes where I decipher where one color ends and another begins. In the style that I’m know for (and that gets copied the most cough cough) I don’t use any gradients, and everything is outlined- like a comic book, but even more strict. I do this all by hand on Procreate. If it’s a large piece with a lot of detail, it can take a long time. I also try to limit the colors I use (especially if it’s going to be screen printed) so that is another layer of brain power.
Coloring the piece, even though it technically flows like a coloring a coloring book page, is the most time consuming part. I change my mind a thousand times, and the colors I choose rarely reflect the colors of the actual landscape or image I’m referencing. I prefer for the colors to be balanced and interesting, and maybe they’re “inspired by” the original colors. I’m sure my overuse of the color magenta in natural landscapes probably already gave that away. I typically add all the color in Photoshop with TGTS’s Kraftone Kit- either with the patterns if they’re just going to be digital prints or with the brushes if they need to be screen printed for something like a show poster.
I WOULD SPEND HOURS OR DAYS TO GET SOMETHING DIGITAL TO LOOK LIKE IT HAD BEEN SITTING ON THE SHELVES OF AN ANTIQUE STORE FOR DECADES.
I always use one of TGTS’s Infinite Pulp paper textures on top of my work to give it that added grit and age that I haven’t been able to get over for years. And if the work is going to be screen printed (you can’t put a paper texture layer on a screen print) I always make sure it’s going to be printed on some yummy, pulpy cardstock from French Paper. It’s like Infinite Pulp IRL!
Your work spans prints, stickers, coozies, keychains and ornaments. Does your approach to texture change depending on how small or tactile the final product is going to be?
I don’t know why I feel so passionately about this, but I loathe a lot of texture on stickers. Like I’ve turned some of my print designs with the paper texture and rough mono-linework into stickers, and I HATE it. Something about it looks so wrong. Sticker designs are supposed to be crisp, bold, and clear. Even if the edges of an illustration have a little bit of “roughness” it needs to be minimal and absolutely no gradient. I feel the same way about t-shirt designs. I make almost all my sticker and t-shirt designs in Illustrator. Basically, I think if it can’t be screen printed, it shouldn’t be a t-shirt or sticker. Ew.
You've made custom fonts under the name Old Colorado Type Co. How does type design connect to your illustration work? Do they pull from the same instincts?
I’ve made a few typefaces for a few reasons. 1) I love a challenge and wanted to see if I could do it. 2) Turns out I really really like making them. 3) There have been a few projects where I needed something specific that I couldn’t find, so I had to make it myself. 4) Some people talk about the passive income you can make from selling typefaces… I would like to thank the 12 people who have bought any of mine in that last year.
But it really is fun, and if I had more time and money to put into marketing them I would make more. I almost always start with an antique specimen that I find online or in an old sign painting book, of which I collected a couple of little ones. They often fit with the art I’m making because of the vintage, hand drawn quality I give them. Some of them even have a “rough” version that I created to match the rough edges of the lines in my illustrations. It is my biggest pet peeve when the texture of a font doesn’t match the texture of the linework in a piece.
What does a dream brief look like for you right now?
I make a lot of concert posters and band merch, and it’s some of my favorite stuff to work on. Collaborating with the ADs is so much fun because they always have the coolest ideas that push me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise have done. My dream brief would be to posters for a band that I love, that I haven’t gotten work for yet (cough cough My Morning Jacket cough), that was of something I haven’t really gotten to explore yet. I’ve really never done much in the architectural world. Or I’d love to do more with psychedelic type. Or portraits would be really fun!
Do you remember your first True Grit encounter? How did you find our tools?
I believe I first downloaded a free sample pack and fell in love with a Procreate brush. This was so long ago I can’t remember exactly who recommended it… but it was probably Darren Thomas McGee.
What made True Grit stick when so many brush packs end up… quietly ignored in a folder somewhere
From the first brush I used I could tell the quality and attention to detail was way beyond any other tool I had downloaded (and it was free!). Each kit, brush, action, etc. that I’ve purchased since (I think I’m close to having the whole library at this point) has been so crucial to helping me create the high realistic, vintage look that is so important in my work. I’m a sadist when it comes to killing myself to get every little detail right. I would spend hours or days to get something digital to look like it had been sitting on the shelves of an antique store for decades. Other tools would get me like 60% there. But the good people at TGTS get me there 100%. If there’s something in my head I’m envisioning, it’s rare that I’m not turning to a TGTS product to turn it into a reality.
I KNEW IF I SPENT MY TIME DOING IT AND THAT’S WHAT I PUT OUT, THEN THAT’S WHAT I WOULD GET ASKED TO DO.
Your prints actually have texture printed onto the paper itself. How do you think about the relationship between the digital texture you build in software and the physical texture of the final object someone hangs on their wall?
I used to feel insecure about this. I would put the digital texture on the image I would post online or in the product listing, but then I would print exclusively on Kraft or pulpy paper. But I could never get the sizes or weights I needed of the pulpy paper, and it never looked consistent. So when I brought all my printing in-house, I bought rolls of really high quality, partially recycled paper and printed the texture onto the paper. I really love the consistency of the appearance (the pulpy paper would sometimes have unsightly, dark chips in it) and that I can make them in any size I want.
That being said, if French Paper would finally like to sell me their paper in rolls I would be eternally grateful.
You describe your work as quirky and colourful. How do you protect that quirkiness when you're working on a client brief? Does it ever get flattened out?
What’s so fun about being in this point in my career and having put as much stuff out on the internet as I have, people have come to expect and ask for it. I would say until about four years ago I was still getting asked to do some corporate looking stuff, and I just stopped saying yes to that stuff. I knew if I spent my time doing it and that’s what I put out, then that’s what I would get asked to do. But the last client job I did had a unicorn in it, and the one before that, the client said “we want hot pink for the men.”
A FEW TIMES WE’VE MET UP FOR A FEW DAYS AND JUST MADE ART TOGETHER, AND THE AMOUNT AND QUALITY OF WORK THAT I CAN CREATE IN THAT AMOUNT OF TIME IS OTHER-DIMENSIONAL.
EXPLORE CAROLINE'S FAVORITE TOOLS
Which True Grit tools are basically on speed dial for you? Any ride or die brushes you reach for without thinking?
Holy crap that’s tough. Obviously the Kraftone Kit is the one I use the most, but I have so much fun with others. The Halftone Zine Machine is addicting to goof off with and so handy. Bezier Buddy has saved me so many times. Rusty Nib from the Debaser pack and the Distressed Inker from the Kraftone Kit are my favorites, but I also use a lot of stuff from the Lithotone Pack as well as the Stipple Studio.
When inspiration runs low, what usually helps you reset or reconnect with your practice?
The number one thing that gets me stoked to create is traveling- ideally traveling and visiting art museums or seeing other artist friends. I have some dear friends around the country who are also working artists, and a few times we’ve met up for a few days and just made art together, and the amount and quality of work that I can create in that amount of time is other-dimensional.
But if I can’t travel, I usually need to get back in my sketchbook with some traditional media. I screw around with paint or prismacolor markers sometimes. It usually gets me excited to draw different things and look at subject matters in a different way.
What are you excited to explore next in your work?
I’m currently exploring victorian lithography techniques. It’s a super fun challenge to try to figure out how to recreate their techniques digitally.
Tough love: what’s the best bit of advice your younger self wouldn’t have wanted to hear?
“You should go to art school and stop trying to guess at other careers that will be ‘more stable.’ Because you only want to make art anyway, and a creative career will make you more money and be more stable than working for anyone else.”
What do you listen to when working?
I have a very specific formula: In the mornings I watch vlogs from other artists on YouTube, in the afternoon I listen to either indie rock or obnoxious girl pop, and in the evenings I watch every sitcom ever.
FAST FIVE
Mountains or desert?
Agh. Mountains.
What's the first thing you ever got paid to draw?
A pencil drawing of my dad’s friend’s grandchildren
Sketch on paper or straight to digital?
Sketch on paper, although I never have time.
Last trail you hiked?
Garden of the Gods
What's your creative superpower?
Only realizing I used too much color after I finalized the file.
