This Month WHACK is featuring the artist Courtney Reagor. We sat down with Courtney to find out about her inspiration, creative process, and influences.

Do you ever deal with clients that restrict your creative process? -Doing freelance illustration, you’re always sort of at the mercy of the client unless they happen to be completely trusting of your process and personal vision. The most restrictions I’ve faced were time-wise. It’s not uncommon to feel like I’m at the bottom of the food chain in the whole process when dealing with a big ad firm. Art directors are answering to other higher ups and pressed for time in general, so hearing about a project at the last minute is sort of something i’ve had to prepare myself for.

How do you deal with criticism from your peers? -I try to stay open minded and welcome all feedback. Not everyone is going to love what you do, but its important to me to maintain a focus on being authentic. Letting it come from the core and using your strengths to compose a visually stimulating image, as opposed to getting swallowed up in visual trends.

What inspires your style of illustrations/color pallet? -I’m inspired by the simplicity of a well composed image. Paul rand was the boss when it came to using simple shapes to create a dynamic composition. My mom has been a huge a influence as far as my color sense. Watching her play around with shapes and patterns sparked my curiosity about color relationships from the get go. But right now, I’m all for subtly, limited palettes, simple linework, nothing over worked but .

What visual references do you call upon for inspiration and influence? -This question overwhelms me. Maybe because I’m overwhelmed by images every day and have never explained how I filter them. I have a dropular account (dropular.net) that is a great way for me to keep a bank of the images I find floating around the internet. I’m drawn to anything that is slightly off. Borderline hard to look at, but kind of beautiful. Pop culture is always an influence. But art history-wise I was always attracted to Mannerism, artists likes Pontormo. The limbs were always way too long. But I like strange found photos and absurd advertising from past decades. Nostalgia plays a huge role in the kinds of images I make. I like to dig deep through old books and magazines that I find in second hand stores. I think film is incredibly important too. I try and take notes to beef up my sense of space relationships. Its also a really helpful resource with character development.

What personal projects are you pursuing at the moment? -I’m working on some promotional materials for a musician based out of Brooklyn. When I’m not drawing I like to do collage work, just to play with shapes and negative space. I’m also doing what I can to learn about different types of printmaking. There’s something really comforting about the different processes, physical work, and being able to step away from the computer for a change.

Beverage of choice? -Sweet Leaf Half Lemonade Half Iced Tea.

Favorite object? -Giant 5ft Swatch Watch wall clock that hangs in my kitchen.

You can view more of Courtney Reagor’s work on her flickr page, personal website at CourtneyReagor.com, her blog Raised on Sandwiches and her dropular page.

Thanks Courtney for being Whack’s second featured artist and tagging our wall with your artwork.

At the core we are all artists here at WHACK media design. The need for creative ideas is constant. We want to help support spontaneous creations, by tagging our back wall. It’s our way to feature your art, creation, sketch, painting, whatever the medium. We encourage you to tag our wall and we’ll feature your artwork for the month, link to your site, facebook, twitter, etc., to help promote you as an artist, as well as keep our wall fresh with ideas. Find out how to be a WHACK featured artist.