I love drawing comics but it's so labor intensive, it's so much work, that you're stuck at your table drawing 10 hours a day. I love it and it's really fun, but when it's over with I always want to take a break and do something else. I do comics half of my time, and spend the other half doing freelance illustration, live art in night clubs, shows in galleries, body painting on girls.

I just couldn't be the quiet nerdy guy in a studio drawing comics 10 hours a day. I have to work on different things, go out, talk to people, meet people. That's one of the reasons I moved to Los Angeles. Every time you go out, you go to a gallery, or to a party, and you don't know who you're going to meet next. You might be meeting your favorite musician, or some art director, or producer, or porn star...

It all adds to my art too!

Meeting a lot of unique people is what enables me to work on a variety of projects and evolve my style. I love the art scene here because it's a mix of all styles. You see some fine art mixed with street art, comics, anime... There's no rule, no set aesthetic, because everyone here has moved from other cities and countries anyway. So you're getting this huge mix... Everyone has a different way of doing things, and you can take pieces and add them to your own arsenal as an artist.

When a creative kid asks me for an advice, I'll always say: Try and meet the most creative people in your city, make friends with them, hang out with them... Because you'll actually learn a lot from them, just through being around their energy.

You don't even need to speak the same language to learn from them. Art is a universal language. That's an immediate way to connect with people. To be able to make lines with your hands that provoke some chemical reaction in someone's brain is just awesome, it's like magic!

Jim Mahfood

Comics artist and illustrator.