We had the good fortune of connecting with Jonathan St. Amant and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jonathan, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I pursued teaching art because it allows me to create my own curriculum, where I get to teach what I love to my students. It also gives me time during holiday breaks to pursue my own artistic goals.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
With my personal art practice, I specialize in wizards, ninjas, derpy creatures, and pinup girls. My style is really cartoony, with a sarcastic and sometimes psychedelic edge. I’m inspired by anime, sci-fi, fantasy RPG video games, the environment, and pop culture. Lately, I’ve been inspired by the Black Lives Matter protesters. Their energy and passion for change is uplifting, and it’s great to see a youthful group of every ethnic and religious background represented for such a vital cause. I’m using this quarantine time to work on a few new story ideas. They are set to be a compilation of short stories following a particular character in graphic novel form. I’ve recently split from my agent (amicable creative differences), and I look forward to maintaining my creative integrity- creating things I want to see in the world- rather than bending to the will of marketing statistics and demographics. Regarding my career as an educator, I am looking forward to shifting my curriculum toward more comic projects and other narrative art. I’m not excited about the prospect of continuing to teach online. This pandemic has made it really frustrating to teach effectively. Distance learning has been rife with challenges, and I’ve had to simplify my curriculum to take into account the various possible situations my students are in. I miss the in-person teaching experience.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If my best friend visited, I’d remind him to stay at least 6 feet away. If he insisted on staying, I guess we’d hang out on my front porch, and maybe have a beer. But then, if he had to use the restroom, he would probably have to go home. Maybe we could continue hanging out on Zoom.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to give a shoutout to my art social groups: The Genie Group, the Orange County Cartoonist’s Group, and the SCBWI Illustrator’s group.

Website: http://www.jonsaintamant.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/jonsaintamant
Twitter: @jonsaintamant
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MisterSaintAmant

Nominate someone: ShoutoutSocal is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.