Multiply Your Gifts: A Conversation with Illustrator Robert Paul, Jr.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Robert Paul, Jr. is a community certified and USA Today bestselling illustrator. He has a love for people and everyone’s unique story, which perfectly feeds into his illustrator and creator career. Born in St. Lucia and raised in St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands, Robert’s ultimate calling is to help young people lead fun, positive, and enriched lives through storytelling. He lives in Houston, Texas, and enjoys mentoring young artists.
NJEMILE
Today I’m speaking with Robert Paul, Jr., illustrator of Jeanine DeHoney’s new children’s book, This Sunday My Daddy Came to Church.
In reading about you, Robert, I learned that you're a winner of the NAACP Image Award, you’re a USA Today best-selling illustrator, and you've done so many other things in your short life. All babyface and whatnot.
ROBERT
I am pretty young—I’m only 35.
NJEMILE
Really??!! I have to get some keys from you. You've done some amazing time management in your life.
ROBERT
I appreciate that.
NJEMILE
Welcome to KIZA BlackLit. Congratulations on your role as illustrator of this beautiful new book, This Sunday My Daddy Came to Church. I'm curious. For this particular book, how did you go about matching the characters with your art?
ROBERT
One of the things I thought about was myself as a kid; I always do that. I think about my childhood. I think about what children are like today, how they interact, how they play. I wanted to not be cliche with the interactions, you know, like really be genuine and just try to relive those storytelling elements. I'm going to grab some imagery so that I could show you some of the characters I'm actually talking about during this.
NJEMILE
You talking about cliché! I work in the Writing Center at the local University and yesterday I was I did an exercise called Rewriting Cinema. The exercise is about paraphrasing. So I wanted to take the take the script from one film scene and rewrite it, say it in our own words. Maybe rewrite the characters, give them a different perspective, or whatever.
But when I was looking for films for the exercise, I found that a lot of them were so cliche, it's like the dialogue was written in stone—you can barely even say something different, and the characters themselves were very cliche. It was an interesting study, because these were movies that I appreciated and some of the young folks suggested those movies.
I realized, one, how much the dialogue was cliche, two, how much the situations were limiting, so the responses that people had to what happened were limited and three, they were very visual. The films were much more geared to visual messaging than to the conversations between the characters.
ROBERT
Interesting. That’s actually a really good technique in becoming better in your writing and really pushing all that. I think I should try that. I'm a writer as well. I'm working on my own books.
NJEMILE
Oh, I didn't know that!
ROBERT
Yeah, I haven't debuted as an author yet, with traditional publishing. I have one book I'm currently looking to sell and I'm writing two graphic novels, as well.
NJEMILE
The one you're looking to sell, is that a novel?
ROBERT
It’s actually a children’s book. It's kind of a slice of life story, but then it's also mixed with a little bit of magical realism. So, it's an interesting tale and I'm still doing some edits to it, particularly in the end. I would love to share it with you at some point.
NJEMILE
Yeah, please do, please do. That's one of the things that KIZA does. We do editing for writers. Actually, not KIZA, but Next Level Publications Group. KIZA is a project of Next Level Publications Group. We started out on with my freelance writing and editing business and folded it into a non-profit. So, you ready to show us?
ROBERT
So, what I was talking about with cliche was mainly some of this stuff here, right? You see the interactions with this little boy here, the main character with his friend here? This is how kids would interact when I was a kid. Like how you see kids interact just in general, they're not just like high-fiving and running in circles. They’re giving each other adapts, you know. They're really culturally driven in their interactions, is what I've what I've seen.
And the relationships between little boys and girls. Like, it doesn't have to be anything odd, but it’s like, sometimes when I was a kid, little girls would just grab my arm, and we would even skip together, you know, that kind of thing would happen. We would have an even camaraderie, because we’re all the same, in that way. So, it was awesome to be able to portray that.
NJEMILE
That's wonderful.
ROBERT
And these types of things. I remember in church when I was a little boy. My mother would always tell me, “Stop playing around.” I’d do these faces in front of people, in front of my friends, in front of the pew. This was like, definitely me when I was a kid.
NJEMILE
That is way cute. It’s classic without being a cliche.
ROBERT
Exactly. Here’s another one. Right here, he's just messing around in the pew, just laying over the back, interrupting the mom and he's just having fun. Then you see people in the choir watching and kind of almost laughing at it. So, it's all that complete interaction with characters all around the page. That's what I wanted to show in the book.
NJEMILE
Yes, awesome. I can really appreciate the way you took those classic feelings, those predictable emotions and behaviors and made them special to these characters. And they don't look like cookie cutter characters.
ROBERT
Yeah, exactly. I really wanted to show that unique family tie. Even in a dynamic where you have a mother and a father, one is going to church and the other isn’t; sometimes that can have a lot of issues—whatever your religion is—if one isn't doing the same thing as the other, there's always that way of like, you gotta do this like me. In this story, there's a lot of grace, you know, and I feel like when you give that spouse or that significant other grace during those times, or if they decide they don't want to go to a church or do something like that, that's when you end up seeing the real miracles, you know. Am I allowed to say the end of the book? Can I show the end of the book?
NJEMILE
Maybe not the end.
ROBERT
Let me say this. You’ll notice that, in this book, grace creates miracles—it creates opportunities for things to happen that you’d never expect. And I think I think it's important that we do that, and I think that’s what this book teaches. It teaches grace, it teaches strong family, even though everyone isn't doing the thing the way that you think it should be done. I wanted to show those strong family ties within the illustrations.
Jeanine DeHoney did a great job in her writing, where she's showing it beautifully, and I wanted to piggyback on that and also marry my illustrations to the text in a way that was showing it in unique way, that even transcends the text and goes into a whole other realm with these illustrations. They kind of live independently.
NJEMILE
Yeah, absolutely. I think “independently” is a better word than “separately," because they are together. The illustrations are each telling a story in their own right, and that’s great. When you first came on, you were talking about just coming in from another appointment and having appointments stacked up. You do so much stuff. You engage with your art all over the place. You teach in the Y, you teach one on one, you teach in the University, you design UI interfaces and that kind of thing and you have illustrated a number of books. How do you manage to be in so many places at one time? How do you keep yourself balanced in all of that?
ROBERT
I think it's really having a strict schedule and having strict boundaries with what you will allow and you won't allow to interrupt your time. I think it's important to have that. I think there are things that you should let interrupt your time when it happens. But I think it's also important to have those strict values. Actually, I just ended my program at the Y a few weeks ago. So, right now I'm just doing the one-on-one teaching and the college teaching.
One of the things is that I make sure that I have particular days when I'm grading, days when I'm meeting with students, days when I’m writing discussion posts or responding to discussion posts. And I think it's important to even do things ahead of time, where you have something pre-written, and then when it's time to submit it, you just do it. So, it's all at once, and having particular days.
Tuesdays are usually my college grading days and Mondays are usually the days where I secure work, different types of gigs, like doing caricature work. At the same time, I'm doing my full-time freelance illustration stuff. Those could be with a company, it could be for a children’s book or it could be stuff for animation. I do all that during the day. But during the day, I have to kind of pocket my time to do my college work—answering emails, all those kinds of things. So, it's all day driven. Yeah.
NJEMILE
For upcoming artists and artists that are already out there, can you give them some tips on how to market themselves? And how to grab those gigs from wherever they are, how to target them? What are the access points? All of that sort of thing.
ROBERT
I would say this: I would say to make sure that your art is the best it can possibly be, first. I would say, yeah, there's the selling point, there's being able to market yourself and all of that: get your work posted online, on Instagram, wherever. And I would make sure that your art is in a place where you're getting interactions, where people are seeing and commenting on it and liking it, whether that be online or in person, however that works for the individual.
Then from there, you've created an interest, then you create a need. You say, “Hey, would you guys like to work with me? Would you like my drawings to be featured as something you do? Or even if you're talking to an influencer or a celebrity—get in touch with one of those people, and you can offer to draw them. You can say, hey, is there something that you'd like done? And offer your services. Sometimes that means that you have to—I call it investing.
Like, I've drawn celebrities before and they end up posting my work and many more people see it. I’ve done that investment of my time and it turns into way bigger projects. I've done free events also. Like I did a free book fair and featured my books at the fair. No one at the fair actually bought my books in the beginning, but then the organizers got everyone together that organized the event, and they cleaned out my books. They bought every single book I had there, and then one of the organizers ended up teaming up with me to do her own personal children's book.
NJEMILE
Nice.
ROBERT
It ended up that something I wanted to do for free ended up paying me thousands of dollars in the long run. So those kinds of things happen when you when just be genuine with your time. Like, "Hey, I want to do this thing, I want to be part of this event, to be able to support it and you never know what happens. Being in the right place at the right time, along being in alignment with what you need to be doing—doing your work and like, blessing others with your skills. It ends up being awesome in the end.
NJEMILE
Blessing others with your skills—that resonates with me really well. I'm thinking about artists that I have been in contact with who have difficulty responding to commissions. Their art is for them. So, when someone asks for their work, it's like, no—I mean, they just wind up not doing it. What do you say to an artist like that, who is good, but somehow that translation between art for self and art for community art or for a livelihood just doesn't come together.
ROBERT
So, there's a number of things. My perspective on the matter is that I believe that my skills were not given to me for me. They weren't given to me, for me. I can enjoy them, but they were not given to me for me. They're given to me for everyone else. That's what I believe gifts are, particularly when you have a gift for entertainment, you have a gift for design or a gift for being a beautician or something like that.
Those gifts are given to you for the betterment of humanity or the betterment of everyone else. That’s when I see my gifts grow the most, when I end up giving them to others, whether it be compensation gifts—you give it, you're compensated with money or something awesome or whatever—but also, gifting it too. I think that's one of the hurdles a lot of artists deal with.
A lot of artists that won't sell their work or sell something they do are probably successful in another area where they're able to support themselves. Because if they don't want to give their work and they're not doing anything else, then what are you doing? [BOTH CHUCKLE] Living under a bridge or something.
NJEMILE
Right.
ROBERT
For me, that’s all I do—that’s it. Because of that, I had to make a decision. Am I going to spread this gift? Am I going to use this or am I going to do something else that’s going to compensate me and then do this as a hobby?
And then, I said to myself, I wouldn’t do anything else. Cause, if I do something else, then I’m always thinking about art. So, it’s like, I don’t feel like there’s as much fulfillment for me. I would say your gifts are to be multiplied. They're given to you to be multiplied within you and then to be given out to the masses, is what I think.
So—I'm a Christian. In reading scripture, one of the things is like seed time and harvesting. When you plant a seed, that seed is supposed to grow into a harvest. And churches are like, plant the seed and it’s a money thing. But it's not necessarily about that. It's more about planting a seed, either it being a literal seed, being a seed of time, being a seed of love, being a seed of anything.
And it’s not even just scriptural. I feel like it's a law. You plant any seed of anything into anybody; it's going to multiply. It could be a bad seed, too.
NJEMILE
True.
ROBERT
I’m going to plant some hate into you, and you’re gonna be a hateful person and destroy the world, you know?
NJEMILE
I’ve seen seeds like that around.
ROBERT
Yeah, exactly. You plant seeds of love, you plant seeds of anything, and it's like I talked about my gifts were given to me. I feel like God gave me the ability to see and to create and I took that seed and I turned it into the ability to create visual art. And then all the leaves from those branches—animation, teaching this or that, caricature art—it’s now bearing fruit in different areas and then different people are taking that fruit, eating it, some of the seeds are going through them..
NJEMILE
Yeah, it’s incredible how many more seeds come from one seed. There are many, many seeds in each fruit and there are many, many fruit on a tree. So yeah, it magnifies exponentially. This quarter, the theme for KIZA BlackLit is Me, and that includes a lot of things: authenticity, self-awareness, that kind of thing. How does self-awareness and authenticity get into your creative process? How are they mixed in there?
ROBERT
It's kind of an interesting topic because right now, I'm on almost a kind of a journey. It’s funny like—you know this as an adult—you're one way in your teens, when you’re in your twenties and in your thirties. As I approach the forties, I'm realizing I haven't been as authentic to myself as I wanted to be. And I think what I'm learning about myself, and this is also coming out in my artwork, is that there are things that I like that may not always get me a job or get me work, especially in this particular climate.
I like a lot of stories that demonstrate the Black experience as a way of cultural awareness to other people and also demonstrated as self-love and an affirmation to oneself. Then also, I like the stories that take the Black experience and normalize it and create us as people that are just people. I once did a talk with Scholastic a couple years ago at ALA. We were talking about a book—
NJEMILE
Is that the American Library Association?
ROBERT
Yes, exactly. I did a talk there and said something about Winnie the Pooh. We look at Winnie the Pooh, we look at Christopher Robin, and we love the relationship between all of the characters. Not one time when you call Christopher Robin are you calling him White Christopher Robin. You never think about that, because Christopher Robin is a normalized character, and he’s White, but he’s normalized.
NJEMILE
Exactly. I mean, because White is normal [laughs] in the media, you know.
ROBERT
That’s what I’m saying. It's crazy, when I think about it now. I'm also doing a lot of history, looking back—my history, Caribbean history, American history, African history. And it's crazy because, genetically, everything comes from Africa. I’m like, why is whiteness the normalization? I think the normalization should be everything because everything is everything, but at the same time, where things originated from should be the normalization.
NJEMILE
Absolutely.
ROBERT
It's almost like we've been—
NJEMILE
—erased. The language that’s being applied to that nowadays—erasure—is so appropriate, because the voices are erased, which is why I think it's so important to have a KIZA BlackLit, where it really is all about Black voices speaking. That normalization is so important, for us to know the nuances of our humanity, that there are many nuances, and the capacities, the trials or tribulations, all of that stuff, becomes a part of the wholeness of who we are.
ROBERT
Exactly, exactly. I think that's a beautiful way to put it. I'm realizing that myself. I'm very unapologetically Black with my work, but then, at the same time, as a kid, I always liked anime. I like different media, like Hayao Miyazaki, Akira Toriyama, different types of anime—old school, I particularly like things from the early 70s, the 80s and the 90s. One of the things I'm learning is that there's an immense amount of skill to be able to draw in different genres, and I'm learning that I am able to do that.
NJEMILE
I saw that.
ROBERT
I can draw in American.
NJEMILE
(Laughing) “I can draw in American.”
ROBERT
Yeah, I appreciate that. I can draw Japanese type work. I can do any kind of cultural work.
NJEMILE
Yeah, like the like quote-unquote inner-city, mural type—
ROBERT
Yes, that type stuff too, and I like to mix it together. I like to use different colors and media. I like to use paper, then scan the image onto my computer and I also like to use traditional media. I’ve been doing a lot of traditional drawing lately. I really enjoy that. And I think, just being in touch with my actual self has been a big, big change. What I am allowing in and what I'm allowing out of myself has really been a big discovery.
I've just been really trying to recover what I liked, what I really enjoyed and not trying to create for the sake of appeasing a publisher or appeasing someone. It's not strictly for me, but I want to draw for me as well. Because, whenever I draw for myself, people end up liking it more because of the personalization of the art. That's a long way to say, I just want to draw what I want to draw, but if you like it, let's work together.
NJEMILE
Right, right. So that allows you to be true to yourself.
ROBERT
Yes, authenticity.
NJEMILE
And discovering more about yourself. I think that's an important part of it too, because at one point you said that you maybe you weren't as authentic as you would have liked to be, but maybe you just weren't as unfolded, you know.
ROBERT
That’s true.
NJEMILE
Actually continuing to grow and having more to show, to express.
ROBERT
Yeah, that's a good point, a good way to say it. It's funny because I tend to—I wouldn't call it super critical, but I use language that could be very black or white. I’m not a big gray area person in terms of the way I speak, but my thought process can be a very gray area, cause there's a lot of nuance and gray area in this world. But when I speak, I'm very absolute, which is kind of interesting. I'm gray area in mind and very absolute in speech, like "I'm never doing this again” or "I'm doing this every day.”
NJEMILE
That's funny. So, one more piece about yourself: what about self-care? How is that manifesting?
ROBERT
It’s actually huge that you mentioned that. Lately, that has been one of the biggest things I've tried to partake in, whether it be for therapy, whether it be spending more time with friends, family, loved ones. And even physical self-care. Making sure I get my hair braided the way I want it to be braided or like, if I want to wear it out, making sure it's nicely done, conditioned, taken care of. Even emotion. All the things, everyday taking care of yourself. Obviously like showers, but I mean everything.
You know, artists could do that. Artists, sometimes they'll work and work and work and they won't even take care of themselves, you know, they'll just be doing. I've decided, I made sure, I'm going to take care of myself. Even my diet, trying to get back into exercising again, the way that I used to, because I remember I was an athlete. Especially when I was in high school, beginning of college, I was in really good shape. I used to go to the gym, lifting weights constantly.
When I got into my career, it just went down. I'm really trying to regain consistency in my habits, because I don't want it to get to a point where now I have to maintain this thing— maintain my body not giving out, versus maintaining myself along the way. I noticed I started feeling pains in my knees and stuff—like, why do I have knee pain? What's going on? I started taking different supplements, started taking the things I need to take, seeing my doctor. I’m from the Caribbean, so we’re big on sea moss.
NJEMILE
One of life’s miracles, like you were talking about.
ROBERT
Every day, I take that stuff. It's good for your skin, your hair. And I'm noticing that because I my skin is like—I have good skin.
NJEMILE
It’s fabulous!
ROBERT
There’s s a light here, but even without the light it's like—
NJEMILE
You are shining! You ARE the light!
ROBERT
Your skin is great, too.
NJEMILE
Thank you, thank you. So, changing gears just a little bit. I want to talk about a couple of things and I hope we do have time. I know we're trying to keep this to an hour, because we both have to go and do other things.
But quickly—about AI. I don't think we can have a conversation without talking about the influence or the impact of AI in the whole art world and how you think artists can navigate that space now.
ROBERT
AI. It's such a nuanced topic. It’s massive. AI was even around before AI.
NJEMILE
Right, before generative AI became so easy at your fingertips.
ROBERT
Word processing was one of the first ones. My first AI was Allen Iverson, but—
LAUGHTER
NJEMILE
I happen to have spent years in Philadelphia, so I know who you’re talking about, thank goodness.
ROBERT
That’s great. I was a huge fan of that guy, gauging my style and stuff. Anyway, back to AI. Yeah, I definitely think AI has, I would say for art's sake, it's made people believe that they are artists—
NJEMILE
Hmm.
ROBERT
—but they're not necessarily artists; they're more like prompt directors. And I think there is a place for AI. I’m going against the grain here. Artists will be like, what is he talking about? But I think there is a place for AI. I just don't think that human connection with human is something that you need AI to replace.
Art is something that's deeply driven by connection with other people. People create art, and then it connects to other people. If you put AI in the place of that, you're losing that human connection. Art is meant to be taken in by the masses to evoke or create ether emotional appeal or emotional reaction or whatever that has to do with emotion.
I think art is something that is highly subjective, it's something that is not ones and zeros, but when you add AI to the mix, it takes away—I mean, this is a very broad way to say this—it takes away soul from your art. I see this, and I can always tell when something is AI, regardless of how beautiful and amazing it may look. And the reason being is, there's something about the eyes, there's something about even—
NJEMILE
—the lines.
ROBERT
—the serendipitous action of lines, that isn't there. It's very calculated.
NJEMILE
It’s very calculated. That’s it.
ROBERT
Very clean, crisp.
NJEMILE
So clean, so crisp, yes.
ROBERT
I think that's what it is. We humans, we can draw clean and crisp and calculated, but there still is the element of your touch in there and you can see it, you know. I am for AI being a manager—not a manager, but a planner. I feel like AI can help with planning, particularly if you are an assistant or like an office manager, using AI could really boost your ability to work. I think scheduling; it’s huge for scheduling.
I also believe that that AI, when it comes to word processing, is a big deal, because I've always used it for word processing. If you spell something wrong and you want to fix it, that's all AI. I think AI is mainly for that—it's a glorified Google search, in the way that I would use it personally.
NJEMILE
I agree with that Google search, and it occurs to me that we have over seven billion minds on the earth, and someone decided that we need a mechanical one and to the erasure of many of those minds. That is one perspective that is just an incredible thing to look at. All these are mind are here, but we're looking for another one, rather than creatively bringing these minds together, which is what AI is able to do. AI is able to scan the human mental productivity and output to a greater extent than we can do individually.
They can scan many, many, many millions of minds and see what they say on a particular subject in a few seconds, we are not able to do. So that aspect of AI I think is very fascinating. My real beef with AI is its impact on our natural resources, particularly water—
ROBERT
Absolutely.
NJEMILE
—at a time when people are already hurting from the impacts of climate change, they would guzzle up all the water—that, for me, is the height of irresponsibility.
ROBERT
I think you're right. You're absolutely right. I think there's a massive amount of resource usage with AI, a massive amount of energy consumption, you know. I'm also seeing the fact that it's almost like forced unity. It's not a unity that is okay. I have some friends that are artists that are very, very popular—you can say, quote-unquote famous artists. And sometimes when prompts go through, you see something come out and it looks like the art that they did, you know?
Because AI will take everybody's art, everybody's stuff from online, scrape it, and then put it together and create this—it's like a Frankenstein type thing. Yeah, this conglomeration of quote-unquote perfection with fingers that are backwards and eight thousand thumbs—just a mess of stuff. Is it necessarily unity at its best? It’s like, if you’re making a meal and you put all the ingredients together and you didn't really like, measure them—that's what it feels like.
NJEMILE
Not thinking about how the different ingredients work together.
ROBERT
This is what I've noticed, especially in the art realm, in terms of AI. It’s definitely a huge resource hole and also, it's not necessarily ethical in a lot of ways, because you're taking from so many people to create a thing that someone is using that takes away from the livelihood of so many different people.
I've also been asked to do different jobs that include AI, and I'm always reluctant to do that. I actually haven't done any of them because it's almost like, you saw the work that I do, and you're asking me to make prompts for something. There's no sense in that. I can draw fast. I’m not as fast as AI, but—
NJEMILE
—fast enough.
ROBERT
Yeah. If you give me an assignment, I’ll get the thing done and you’ll see it. What’s wrong with that?
NJEMILE
What’s wrong with that? In management, do I really need to do more things in the eight hours—for the same pay?
ROBERT
It’s about money at the end of the day. Corporations don't want to pay you more, because they can get AI to do it. I learned a lot of AI skills because you should always know the enemy. You should always know the skills of your enemy. Understand the thing. Don’t be ignorant. Never be ignorant to your enemy’s abilities, or the abilities of something that you may not understand that you find as a threat, always know it.
Now that I know so much about it and I understand the usage of it, I don't really use AI. Whenever I use AI, it's searching for information. And even when I search for the information, I have to cross-reference with actual books because some of the stuff AI will bring up can be lies, because it's bias based upon the creator of it, especially with African American, Black literature, Caribbean history, Black history in general, AI gives you a lot of lies when you search for stuff on that. So, I try my best to have physical media when it comes to that kind of stuff because, sadly, a lot of it is being taken away. I don't want to be conspiracy-ish. But it's weird.
NJEMILE
There's a lot to be said in the conspiracy realm, but we won't go there. How about this? I would like to know before we get to the last question, what is one struggle and triumph that you see as being definitive for you and your growth process?
ROBERT
One struggle and triumph in my growth process. Wow. That's a really good question. My main struggle that that had found its way into my life and work—I would say “had," because I'm getting through it—is people-pleasing. Because I like to serve. It's one of my love languages, acts of service. I like to gift. So, because of that, I tend to lean more toward people-pleasing.
That is a struggle that I've had in life, but everybody's predisposed to something. I've dealt with it for a long time and because of it, I’ve decided to switch gears. When I want to just say yes, sometimes I say no. If someone wants to do something and I'm conflicted, sometimes I'll try to make way for them, and I'm like, I'm busier than this person. What am I doing? I can say no. It's those kinds of things.
A project may be amazing, may be highly paying whatever, but if I just don't agree with it, I gotta say no. I've had those come around, where I've had to say no to something and it turned out well. I was able to get to do something else because of it. That's one thing, being a people pleaser.
And it's funny because I have a five year old and she is a lot like me. I noticed in school, in this friendship—she's a leader. She likes to lead, but the friends that she has, sometimes she'll want to try to assimilate to that. And I'm teaching her early, you don't have to be this way if you don't want to be this way. You can lead by an example of yourself. You don't have to do what they do. And she's learning that and she's starting to march more by the beat of her own drum. And also, accept and pull on characteristics and ideas from people that are positive and can create growth in her own self to be her unique and authentic self. I'm trying to teach her that.
A triumph. I would say being persistent is a triumph of mine—not giving up. My persistence has done this thing where I've chased something and chased something to no end. Then I say, I just have to let this go. Whether it be a thing, a relationship, any kind of relationship. And it's like, you don’t always have to continue to push at it and pull at it. At the end of the day, it's not all about yourself and what you can do. Other people have free will.
There are friendships that I've cut ties with because a friend was one way, trying to be pulling of my time, when they understood what was on my plate. And I have other friends that understand and they're like, man, when you have time, we're gonna hang out. Let's schedule it. You can't just do it on a whim. That's the way that I am. But, you know, just that kind of thing, that triumph.
Also being single-minded, making sure that when I have a task at hand, getting that task completed to the best of my ability. Way back when I was more of a people pleaser, I wouldn't finish anything. I would get started and then I’d be like, oh, no, let me do this because this will be more, palatable to the masses, let's do this. Yeah, finish the thing at hand, make it awesome and move on to the next.
So that's it. Those are my struggles and triumphs.
NJEMILE
Yeah, those are excellent, and it flows right into this last question, which is: what would you like for students and consumers of your art to take away from your work?
ROBERT
I would like students and consumers of my art to take joy from my work. At the end of every story that I tell, there's an element of joy, there's an element of triumph and there's also an element of grace. I want them to take joy. When people read my stories and see my illustrations, I want them to smile. You know, one of the things I really like is making people laugh, making people smile, saying funny things. That's probably part of the people pleasing. I like making people laugh.
I had a professor when I was in college. I was taking serious pictures, for head shots. It was for a professional development class. I went in and he looked at me, and he's like, “What is this?" He said it in more colorful language. And I said, “It’s me, this is me. I had a friend in photography take it."
He said, “This isn’t you.”
I said, “I’m right here.”
He’s like, “No. Robert, you have an infectious smile. This is you.”
I was like, “An infectious smile ... ?”
He said, “You cannot smile at someone and they not smile back at you. If they don’t smile back, then they’re having a bad day, and then you’ll improve it, because they saw your smile.
That’s what he was telling me, right? And I said to him, “You know what? From now on, every picture I take, if it’s a professional image, I’m going to smile in that image. Maybe I’ll have some where I’m serious, for artistic reasons, but when there’s an image and I really like it, it’s a smile. Because that’s what he told me. He said, ‘You gotta smile, because that's what you are. You're just a smile.’
NJEMILE
That's fantastic. Wow. Joy, triumph and grace?! Beautiful. What a beautiful legacy to look forward to for you, that you're living right now.
ROBERT
I appreciate that.
NJEMILE
Fantastic. And I have to say that, as I was scrolling through your portfolio, I was smiling.
ROBERT
That’s awesome!
NJEMILE
I could really connect with some of the characters and the moment that they were expressing in the picture.
ROBERT
That's awesome, I love that.
NJEMILE
Thank you so much for coming and for this fantastic conversation that we've had today and I look forward to seeing you in the magazine.
ROBERT
Awesome, thank you so much, I really appreciate your having me. It's definitely a big deal.
NJEMILE
All right, take care now.
ROBERT
Take care. Bye-bye.