Today we’d like to introduce you to Kip Henderson.
Hi Kip, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
As a kid, I spent much of my time drawing at my “craft table,” a flimsy wooden desk covered in marker streaks and glue stains. I remember one day when I was about five, I took a drawing I had done and showed my dad. It was a sketch of the main character from Dr. Seuss’s book Green Eggs and Ham. The character had his nose up in the air as he refused to try a bite of the food offered to him. My dad took the drawing and asked me what it was. I showed him he was holding it upside-down, and as he turned it around, I saw his face light up. He took a magnet and put it in the fridge, where it still is today. From that moment on, I thought of myself as an artist and worked hard to keep honing my craft.
I first decided I wanted to become a comic book artist in high school. By this time, my ego had far outpaced my actual ability, and I was way too confident in my artistic skills. When my friend Everett Arce came up with an idea for a comic book hero, I told him I was the man for the job. Everett and I began pouring hours and hours into developing this comic book concept. It didn’t take long for both me and Everett to realize that my art skills wouldn’t be able to deliver the glorious comic book we had both envisioned. I would complete a drawing, and Everett would send me back to my sketchbook to try again. Everett’s stubbornness and refusal to settle for my first attempts forced me to continue to improve my craft. Those are some of my fondest memories— the endless hours spent after school with my friend: creating, refining, exploring, laughing, and drawing. Before too long, I was filling up sketchbook after sketchbook with steam-punk cities, spaceships, and character and creature designs. It felt great to see my art improve, and I became addicted to the thrill of testing my skills and taking on challenges.
I suspect my career in the arts is chasing those three things: the admiration I first found in my father’s encouragement, the energetic collaboration I experienced with my friend in high school, and the challenge of testing my skill day after day. There’s few phrases that motivate me more than “it’s trickier than it looks.” You’d have to fight me to stop me from trying it out for myself. That’s why my artwork and the mediums I create in are so diverse. As soon as I have a grasp on my skill level regarding something like comic books, I get excited about developing my animation or oil painting skills. My eagerness to explore can’t be satisfied! That pursuit has led me to create an entire graphic novel in collaboration with Zach King at King Studio and to embark on a journey as a freelance illustrator where I employ my skills in a variety of ways from storyboarding film projects, designing board games, and even directing a one-bit video game.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Even though my art career faced plenty of obstacles, I don’t consider many of them to be struggles. For example, the college I attended offered almost no classes in the entertainment arts. Instead, I got my degree from the Cinema and Media Arts department in Screenwriting. I didn’t feel at a disadvantage however, because I felt confident in my ability to teach myself art from books and practicing on my own, and I was able to learn how to tell stories, which is not something I felt confident in teaching myself. For me, obstacles were just part of the fun. If I find myself in a less-than-ideal situation, I begin to eagerly anticipate being the one to beat the odds.
The real challenges came in other forms. For various reasons, college and the season immediately following left me creatively and emotionally depleted. The graphic novel I had poured my life into for the past four years was suddenly at risk of never being finished because I no longer had the emotional energy to see it through to the finish line. I began to grow afraid that I was the type of person that always started strong and never finished strong. I grew worried that I wasn’t the energetic, creative individual that I had told everybody I was. I tied all of my self-worth to whether or not I could complete projects I had set out to do.
There wasn’t a magical moment where I had recovered enough to apply the gas to my career and art projects again. I had to be okay with not being okay. It just took time. It still does. My relationship with God is central in this healing process— I’m learning to accept that my value is not found in my success, my career, or even in whether or not I disappoint the people around me. My Christian faith— the belief that only Jesus has the right to declare me valuable— offers me enormous freedom from trying to use art as a means to make myself valuable or appear successful.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Currently, I describe myself as a writer and artist specializing in comics, concept art, and story development. I love to draw fantasy worlds filled with magical creatures, though I also have a special fondness for capturing the small moments of wonder and intimacy in everyday life. A series of comics I did about my day-to-day experiences as a person with disability won an Award of Excellence in the VSA Emerging Young Artist Competition and was toured nationally.
My biggest artistic accomplishment to date is the graphic novel Zachariah King, a 100 page comic book completely illustrated and written by me. At the time of the comic’s conception, I was working for Zach King, an internet star with millions of followers across social media platforms. Zach has built up a reputation as a magician and has published a children’s fantasy book series about how magic runs in his family. I had the idea of exploring what previous generations of magic users’ lives might have looked like, and Zach agreed to let me turn my idea into a comic book. The comic is about Zach’s great-grandfather Zachariah King, an FBI agent during the 1930s who can turn into a dragon! Within the story is a tale of loss and learning to trust others in the midst of weakness. It’s something that I’ve experienced personally as somebody who was in and out of a wheelchair through middle school and high school.
One of the services I offer currently is creating small, personalized comic strips of about nine panels (perfect for sharing on Instagram) for clients who want their stories told. I love sitting down with a client and listening to them, whether it be their life story, their faith-story, or a love story that they’d like to tell. For one couple I worked with, it was the story of how they met and got engaged during lockdown. It’s been extremely rewarding to see how they’ve been able to use the comic I made for them to share their story with friends and family as they prepare to get married.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.kiphendersonart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiphendersonart/
