Episode 57

Maggie Enterrios on finding her authentic voice as an illustrator

On this episode of Overtime, we dive into the intricate world of Maggie Enterrios’ illustration work. Maggie shares how she found her authentic voice as an illustrator after going into school for photography, and how her first iPad Pro was a catalyst in streamlining her workflow so she could manage a thriving freelance career. As an illustrator working full-time on the road, we also chat with Maggie on all things inspiration, the beauty of taking on new challenges, finding your style, and learning how to draw baby goats—you won’t want to miss it!

I got hired by Apple to be in their iPad Pro commercial having never worked on an iPad Pro and they said, "We're sending you an iPad Pro. We need artwork in one week."

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Transcript

Dan Cederholm: Some designers or illustrators or whatever, I can sort of imagine how it’s created and I think with your work, I just can’t. Even though I know you’ve shared a lot of your process and stuff.

Maggie Enterrios: Would you believe that I also don’t know sometimes? Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I look at something I drew and I’m like, “Whoa! How did this get here?”

Dan Cederholm: Really?

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, it’s like…I don’t know what happens. I think I really get into flow when I’m drawing and time just passes and this really cool stuff comes out of it. I’m still trying to figure it out.

Dan Cederholm: Wow. See, that’s amazing to hear that, actually, because that’s kind of what I would hope that you would say ‘cause there is a mystery to it or is some magic involved.

Maggie Enterrios: Oh, definitely.

Dan Cederholm: It’s so amazing. Okay, for instance, I’m just taking one of your pieces here to kick things off, but this is California Native Plants, and it’s an ink drawing of the State of California and I love this. I love it, anyway, but the fact that you’re using plants that are native to each part of the state it looks like.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, I had to do a lot of research, like a lot of research, but that was so fun.

Dan Cederholm: You’re really into plants, which is awesome.

Maggie Enterrios: No, I’m actually not. I’m really bad at them and I’ve never had a plant that I did not kill immediately. I do not have a green thumb, but what I find interesting about plants is that they do a lot of the legwork for me. My background was always in abstracts and I loved the way patterns and textures collided. I’ve always done monochrome drawings and I kind of had to come up with patterns from my brain. When I discovered that I could use natural elements to create these illustrations, it was kind of revolutionary because I thought like, “Okay, well, I can just draw that. That’s got a natural pattern to it. That’s got a natural texture. That’s got lines that I couldn’t have necessarily made up”, and then it kind of grew from there to keep the plant theme going.

I do individual research per project. At this point, there are some plants that I can draw from my brain, like Chrysanthemums. I’ve done them so many times. They’re so cool, they’re really fun to draw. I can picture them, but I don’t really keep the catalog active. It’s almost like when you cram for a test. You take the test, you do okay on it, and then you just let those facts go ‘cause you need to make room for something else. I do a lot of research at the beginning of a project, and then after that, I start on the next one.

Dan Cederholm: Your handle on a lot of social media is @littlepatterns, right?

Maggie Enterrios: Yes, across platforms. That’s-

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, across your website—great, too. That’s always been something you’ve gravitated towards. Before plants came into the mix here, you did abstract patterns. What’s your background, then? Was like drawing this kind of style, whether it be plants or abstract or whatever, was that always…Did your book covers in school look amazing like…

Maggie Enterrios: Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. I definitely got made fun of by a lot of teachers for drawing on the edges of papers. I think a lot of people who are in the visual arts have that same origin story. Like big doodler. I would pick one thing a year and that’s all I would draw, like spiderwebs everywhere. Yeah, I’ve always been into drawing and as a child, I suppose you would call it crafting, so I was always making things. I didn’t really go outside ever. I just started playing sports in my late 20s. I’ve always been an inside kid and I was always making stuff, then I went to art school. I went in for photography, Pretty quickly decided that I was not as much of a—I guess I would say I didn’t want to work with people as much. I really liked the idea—

Dan Cederholm: I can relate to that.

Maggie Enterrios: Of photography, yeah, yeah. I liked the idea of photography, but it did involve so much face to face and so many feelings, like working with people, them not being happy because of how they’re personally being reflected. It felt like almost too much power. I wanted something that kind of flowed out of me naturally and I ended up switching over to the graphic design department and I kind of had to make a decision at a certain point because I was more interested in fine art and at the time I was naïve, which I can’t really blame myself for because I was 18 years old, but it seemed like I had to make a choice. Like, “Okay, I’m gonna do fine art and probably be poor for forever because that’s all I’ve heard”, or, “I’m gonna be a graphic designer, which is seemingly an employable job.”

I didn’t really know at the time that I could fuse those, so in school, I kind of teetered back and forth between departments. Neither department really even let me in fully. I never got a portfolio review because I was straddling these two departments. It was kind of tough for me, but then as I got my first internship …Or, sorry, not internship, my first temp job-turned-real job in graphic design, I started working with so many freelancers. At my company, we were hiring photographers and illustrators and ad agencies and I saw this pocket into this world of art meets design and realized it was a totally valuable career and I could play around visually and still make a living doing that.

Dan Cederholm: It’s funny because, and I fall into this, too, where when I was younger I just didn’t … I guess I didn’t understand what different things you could make a living doing and…Right? That seems to be a theme, too, in the people that we talk to on the show here.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, our jobs now did not exist when we were like in high school. That blows my mind.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah.

Maggie Enterrios: There is a lot of work out there, and there is an industry that you might not even know exists and you can make it for yourself. I am definitely a rah-rah, follow-your-dreams-type person. I just think there’s no shortage and if you have a specialty and if you can find something that you really, really like to do, I do believe that there can be a market for it.

Dan Cederholm: I was gonna ask like what your favorite tool is in terms of…Is it digital or analog? I know you do both. Has it changed, actually?

Maggie Enterrios: It absolutely has changed. When I…I mean, I did not take the leap or the slide into freelance until I had been working on an iPad for a while.

Dan Cederholm: Oh, wow.

Maggie Enterrios: I was working in black and white like hand illustration for years, but anytime I had to apply it to some sort of commercial project, I had to scan, do a ton of Photoshop work just to knock the background out, which is … I mean, you’ve seen my work. It’s absolute chaos to try to separate…

Dan Cederholm: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Maggie Enterrios: Photograph from background layers. It’s sick. It would take a whole day.

Dan Cederholm: Would you vectorize it, too? Or not?

Maggie Enterrios: Oh, hell no. Uh-uh.

Dan Cederholm: I was gonna say, like that would be a nightmare to turn some of these patterns into-

Maggie Enterrios: I mean, yeah. Now I can because I have Astropad, which tethers into Adobe Illustrator, so I can redraw over my hand drawings one-to-one live and create these usable vector graphics. At the time, maybe I had Live Trace, so nothing looked good. When I used to do screen printing, I had to Live Trace everything, which of course you lose so much of the detail. I mean, it was just such a labor-intensive…

Dan Cederholm: Oh gosh. I just had this visual. I just had this visual of Live Tracing like the California illustration I’m looking at right now.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, it’s-

Dan Cederholm: I’m imagining like how many vector points there would be.

Maggie Enterrios: That’s when Adobe crashes. That’s what happens.

Dan Cederholm: It would probably blow up.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, Illustrator and I… I crash Illustrator a lot, but yeah, it’s been a complete shift in my workflow, working digitally. I was actually thrown into working digitally in the…Potentially the oddest way you will ever hear about. I-

Dan Cederholm: That’s great. Let’s hear.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, are you ready?

Dan Cederholm: I’m ready.

Maggie Enterrios: I got hired by Apple to be in their iPad Pro commercial having never worked on an iPad Pro, and they said, “We’re sending you an iPad Pro. We need artwork in like one week.”

Dan Cederholm: Oh my God.

Maggie Enterrios: They’re like, “It’ll have Procreate downloaded on it. Go to town.”

Dan Cederholm: This is so unbelievable.

Maggie Enterrios: I know, and it’s like-

Dan Cederholm: That’s amazing. That’s amazing.

Maggie Enterrios: I mean, I was shaking. I was like-

Dan Cederholm: I bet.

Maggie Enterrios: “Are you kidding me? I’ve spent the last dozen years working in one method and now the biggest client I could ever imagine has told … Has like given me this hurdle?” I buckled down. I was working full time and I called off the entire week sick and then I got sick ‘cause karma.

Dan Cederholm: Of course, course.

Maggie Enterrios: I worked in Procreate probably, I don’t know, 15, 16 hours a day for a week. Did my first piece, like the first piece I ever did in Procreate is the final piece that I ended up doing for Apple. I did not even have time to do sample projects. I didn’t have time to learn brushes. I was doing everything live and I was … Everything was being recorded as well. It was a time lapse and that was part of the project, so 100% of this illustration was the highest pressure possible, but after that, I felt pretty comfortable in Procreate. I felt like I had learned from the beginning of the week until the end of the week like through complete fear of how to work this program. I haven’t really turned back.

Dan Cederholm: That speaks well for Procreate, too, right?

Maggie Enterrios: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Super intuitive. Yep.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, yeah. Was it in the commercial, did they use it?

Maggie Enterrios: It was in the keynote, and it was also-

Dan Cederholm: Oh, wow.

Maggie Enterrios: The still photos were on the Apple website, on the Apple-

Dan Cederholm: Oh, that’s awesome.

Maggie Enterrios: Pencil page for a while. They were on the iPad, like the iPad landing page. It was really cool. It was so cool.

Dan Cederholm: That must have been … Well, it must have been amazing, too, because you hadn’t used an iPad before.

Maggie Enterrios: No, I hadn’t, no. I also … I don’t hold a pen very well. I mean, I have like a terrible pen grip. It’s very unsightly, but that’s where the magic comes from, so I can’t really fight it. Of course, my gnarly pen grip is in all these photos for Apple because it was such a pressure situation I didn’t even think, “Maggie, hold your hand like a normal person. You’re having your photo taken. It’s like stabbing at the screen.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, I got a deadline and I gotta finish this. I mean, obviously they were fans of your work and I wonder, did they assume that you were already using an iPad? Or-

Maggie Enterrios: I don’t think they were. I mean, I certainly did not imply that I had used an iPad before, but the team that I worked with was wildly supportive and made me feel comfortable and made me feel I was doing a good job. I mean, the whole project went so well and I do honestly think it was the catalyst for the rest of my work because not only did I have this kind of mind-blowing new tool, I also had obviously a huge dose of confidence because like, what a project.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah. Oh gosh, yeah, exactly.

Maggie Enterrios: Talk about validation, like-

Dan Cederholm: Right. You were like, “Hey, I want to think about moving to iPad someday.” How about Apple calls and basically puts you through trial by fire to get-

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, yeah, and I hadn’t really had much luck working on like Wacom tablets or anything like that. I’ve always been a really tactile person. Any disconnect between hand-eye coordination doesn’t really work for me, so having really the same process at my fingertips is vital for me and over the years my process has become … Became … It’s super straight-lined comparatively and my clients love it because they always get a transparent background. Super clean files. I mean, so far it’s just proven to be like a really successful way to deliver illustrations.

Dan Cederholm: Have you completely gone over to digital? Or do you still like to create … It looks like Micron pens is your ax of choice.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, yeah. I was using Rapidograph for a long time, but I have a tendency to kind of not clean them, so I would buy these like really expensive pens and then just destroy the nib. Go three weeks without drawing and there goes 35 bucks. I have probably like a thousand Microns at all times. It’s a little ridiculous, but … It’s kind of hard to answer because I have … I think I have switched over to digital, but that’s really hard for me to say, and it’s not a product of not wanting to be able to draw by hand, but more so … I have been in this very good, privileged pocket of having no shortage of work and it is so much more conducive for me to be able to create that work digitally.

It’s just … It hasn’t allowed me much time for personal projects. I love doing personal projects with ink. I think that that’s where I get a lot of my best ideas and I’m able to come up with forms that I may use on future projects. I definitely go through phases, so maybe I’ll use a very similar small background pattern in like 10 different pieces. If I look through my own portfolio, I can tell which pieces were made during which probably year-long period because they all have these similar background elements, and most of those elements I figured out while I was drawing by hand.

Maggie Enterrios: Without the privilege of like an undo feature, it kind of pushes you to create something out of maybe a mistake, and then I end up adapting those later to digital illustrations. For me, it’s a really great way of exploring creatively. Having some limitations I think can push you outside of your comfort zone and then enable new magical little things to happen where digitally, of course, you can fix every error and it’s obviously great like for client work, but yeah, it’s … I guess in tandem would be the ideal way to work and I’m hoping to get back to that soon when I find a minute.

Dan Cederholm: You mentioned you’re working from the road. Tell us about that.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah. My husband and I last June, we decided to spend some time traveling and we have literally been on the road since. I work-

Dan Cederholm: That’s great.

Maggie Enterrios: I work from wherever I am. The last couple of weeks I was in Colorado. That was really nice being up in the snow. I’m in Southern California right now, going to the Southwest for the next couple of weeks ‘cause I really need some sun. Yeah, it’s been great and it definitely keeps things interesting, especially ‘cause I’m the kind of person who has the tendency to really like cocoon and not see daylight and like work, work, work, work, work. It’s nice to be able to be in these cool spots where I want to explore around and gain new inspiration and not see the same old thing every day.

Dan Cederholm: That’s the dream. Do you think that analog versus digital helps or hinders that? Is it easier to be on the road with an iPad as opposed to paper or-

Maggie Enterrios: I mean, I don’t drive. I’m really afraid of it, so my husband drives and I draw the entire time, so that’s good.

Dan Cederholm: Wow, how cool.

Maggie Enterrios: And bad because I get so many good at-work hours in, but I’m also like not looking up as much, so we’re driving through these beautiful canyons and he’s like, “Reminder to lift your head up and look at the world around you.” I look up and I’m like, “Wow, beautiful”, and then I kind of dig right back in. It’s good and bad because it’s almost like if I’m sitting there enjoying a view I think, “Oh God, these are billable hours. I better get to work.”

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, it’s definitely an evolution, though, right? There’s a thread that runs through my body of work which is I would say probably half motivated by personal interests and half motivated by market research. I am a commercial artist. I mean, that’s what I do and when I get a good response from clients like, “We love your animal projects”, but maybe I don’t have many of those, I think to myself, “Well, what audience am I missing by not having more of these in my portfolio?” A lot of times people will come to me and say something like, “Well, I don’t know if you do this, but we need some bird illustrations.” I’m like, “Yeah, I can literally draw anything. I hope that I can get this project because that could open me up to the thriving ornithology market.”

Dan Cederholm: I love it.

Maggie Enterrios: Sorry, I cannot take myself seriously.

Dan Cederholm: No, I love it. Thriving ornithology.

Maggie Enterrios: Birds earn money.

Dan Cederholm: Absolutely.

Maggie Enterrios: People got a bird.

Dan Cederholm: There’s an industry around all of this stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah. In early college, I was doing a lot of animal illustrations. Mostly they were built out of abstract forms and then as time has gone by they’ve become a little more realistic. I’ve had a lot of projects in the last probably calendar year that have required animal drawings. The first couple of projects I was like, “Shit, I don’t even know if I can draw fur. Like, I’ve never drawn fur. This is gonna be a challenge.” It’s always-

Dan Cederholm: You’ve drawn feathers.

Maggie Enterrios: Something different … Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: Whatever.

Maggie Enterrios: I worked on an amazing couple of projects for this company Beekman 1802. They do like … I guess I can only say everything. They’re most known for their goat soap products, but it’s really is this like lifestyle brand, so it’s merchandise and food and beverage, lots of body products that are all natural. Really cool brand, but the first project that they hired me for, they were like, “Oh, we need black and white flowers.” Check. “Really dense.” Check. Like all these illustrated elements that I was super comfortable with, and at the end of the call they said, “It will need to incorporate baby goats.” I was very excited about that, but I was also like, “I have no idea how I’m gonna make that work.” How does one scale a baby goat with a flower? How do those work together?

In the last year, I’ve had to draw probably like 50 goats, and it’s been a challenge but it has basically enabled me to try out several different methods of drawing something that you wouldn’t normally think would be a challenge. Like, “Oh, fur? Silky fur, furry fury, fuzzy little baby goats.” Just weird shit that I never knew would be part of my portfolio, but now I can really confidently have that as part of my portfolio ‘cause I went through the baby goat boot camp.

Dan Cederholm: How do you research like I gotta draw a goat now?

Maggie Enterrios: Oh my God. I can answer this so easily.

Dan Cederholm: Okay, good.

Maggie Enterrios: I watched YouTube videos of baby goats hopping around for like a day. It was one of those days where I was like, “How did this become my life?” Literally watching videos, pausing, staring at the goats, drawing sketches of their little legs hopping. Husband gets home from work and I was like, “You wouldn’t believe it. Goats hop with their legs straight. It’s adorable.” He’s like, “You need to go outside probably.” Yes, so I do many styles of research for animals. A lot of it is video because I find it way more interesting to have dynamic movement, so something that’s running.

Dan Cederholm: That’s really interesting.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, and it’s kind of hard to find … It’s hard to find the animal that is in your brain, so a lot of the times it’s like a combination of multiple sources. Maybe I’ll … I kind of take some liberties on animal faces and I make them a little bit probably cuter than they are in real life. Like, “You know, the eye’s good there, but I think it would way cuter if it was slightly larger and to the left.” I’ll watch videos, figure out movement. Obviously, lots of reference photography. I take pictures myself. I don’t do many animal photos, but when it comes to flowers and stuff like that, I do a lot of research. For that California drawing, those are plants that growing up in California, those are plants that I knew fairly well already. It is kind of an amalgamation of lots of different resources.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah. Yeah, so you said earlier you like to be inside, and I do, too-

Maggie Enterrios: Well, not as much anymore. I’m getting way better.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah. I was wondering, if like in the field research is part of the process, too?

Maggie Enterrios: It definitely is, and also what kind of credit would I have as a major themed illustrator if I was doing all the research from the comfort of my couch? That’s not cool. That’s not fun. I don’t even have a couch now.

Dan Cederholm: From the passenger seat.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, from the passenger seat.

Dan Cederholm: Another topic I wanted to ask you, because you have this really amazing specific style, right? It’s unique, it’s super unique to you. Have you run into issues with people taking your work or taking your style or work or whatever reappropriating it? Or-

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Probably on the daily.

Dan Cederholm: Oh, geez.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, it used to hit me really hard, especially as I was starting out. One of the freakiest things is realizing that someone has kind of taken your life’s work and is presenting it as their own, but without the background to know where that style came from. That’s hard, and yeah, I kept … Right when I had quit my full-time job and I was starting to do this, I mean, it was like my lifeblood. This is my life, and when I saw instances of that, it would just crush me and I would just think to myself like, “Not yet. Give me a few more years to find my voice, because I am just so new. I’m not ready for this and I’m not ready to be compared to this because no one knows who I am yet. I don’t have the ability to fight against this.”

These days, it’s hard still, but I guess I have to take solace in the fact that I’m gonna keep growing. My work’s gonna continue to evolve. It’s only gonna get more badass over time, and the work that I was doing two, three, four, or five years ago, which is most of the work at this point that kind of gets appropriated, that work is probably not gonna be work I’m creating in the future.

That was a time in my life … I’ve mentioned a few times, I definitely go in phases. I do have that fine artist background. I can only do something for so long. I guess that style’s out there. It’s part of the world, so I can’t really stop it from happening, but what I can do on my own is to evolve and kind of continue growing my brand and making a name for myself so that maybe someone doesn’t know where the style came from, but they know who’s doing it best. Which I hope can be me. I hope I’m always the best-

Dan Cederholm: Oh yeah.

Maggie Enterrios: The best person to do my style.

Dan Cederholm: Oh gosh. Well, that was well said. I mean, that’s a really healthy attitude towards it and it’s interesting that you mentioned that it was harder when you were first starting out, and I hadn’t heard that before. That makes a lot of sense, though, to me in that if you’re well established and have a large following, then it’s probably a little easier to be like, “Well, that’s fine. A majority of the people know who I am and what I do and where it comes from.” When you’re first starting out, that’s a little different.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, and it’s also like I know a lot of styles that have grown out of people who were inspired by my own. I’ve seen a lot of people really do it right. People that started drawing, started illustrating, saw my work as inspiration, and then grew their own style out of that. That is flattering, and I cannot pretend it’s not flattering. That’s awesome. I am totally a proponent of that. I mean, we all … I totally … I looked at like Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, these are like … They’re like long dead. I’m still alive, so you can’t really hurt … Or it hurts my feelings a little more probably, but that’s what I was looking at when I was 16. That’s what I was finding inspiration from, from like hidden details in Klimt paintings. That’s where I got my look.

Of course, you wouldn’t look at my work next to a Klimt painting and be like, “Uh, oh, oh, I see where she got it from.” Of course not. My style has evolved over the years. It’s filled with changes. You can see the patterns of my life shifting. I mean, it’s what I do, but as artists start out, I do think it’s valuable to be looking at the people around you and what they’re doing. I think there just is this problem probably of online sharing, not knowing what pieces are okay to share as your own and which pieces you should be listing your references on. I think … I can imagine it like you’re in your teens. You’ve just drawn something totally awesome that is like your mind is blown. Your parents are like, “Wow, you’re so talented. You just drew this amazing piece.” You want to share it with the world, but that piece wasn’t yours, but you don’t know.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, right.

Maggie Enterrios: I think it is about understanding and learning early on in your career or if you’re a hobbyist learning early on in your hobby, what is the okay and respectful way to learn from the people around you?

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, totally. Absolutely. It comes down like, “Don’t be a jerk”, and …

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, and I mean, we all need an education and like two of my Mom’s favorite pieces that I did in college, like early college, she’s like, “I just love those paintings you did of those two ladies.” I was like, “I think I stole those from Picasso.” She’s always like, “Why don’t you have those up? Can I have those paintings?” I’m like, “No, they can never see the light of day. I totally just took ‘em from a Picasso painting. Like changed the color and called it mine. I did that, too, but I obviously don’t share it. It’s … To me, it’s like awful now. I want to burn them, but it’s also humbling.

Dan Cederholm: It was part of your learning and then you’re not selling it or you’re not passing it off as your own, too, right?

Maggie Enterrios: No, I’m like literally hiding it from the world.

Dan Cederholm: I think that’s the big difference. I think that there are people that can do that and learn as they’re learning or whatever, but if they’re malicious in that they’re claiming it’s theirs or not giving credit where credit’s due, that’s the problem I think.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah. I feel fortunate that the art community … It seems so giant but it really is a small one and I do have to hold out hope that the people that I care about most and the people that I care about hiring me like those people recognize authenticity. When it comes down to it, that’s what matters.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah. Great point. I mean, working with clients, the clients that you work with, these are big companies. These are important things that you’re doing and that comes down to people. People skills, right? Someone might be able to draw a frog like you, but they’re not gonna be able to … There’s so much more that goes into that than just being able to draw something.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, absolutely, and that comes with time and that comes with failure and that comes with learning. It’s kind of like being a chef versus warming up something. No offense to meal delivery kits, if that’s who sponsors your podcast.

Dan Cederholm: This is…Yeah.

Maggie Enterrios: You know what I’m saying? It’s like-

Dan Cederholm: By the way. Okay, remember when I said this is sponsored by HelloFresh earlier.

Maggie Enterrios: No.

Dan Cederholm: Just making you aware of that. I’m just kidding. It’s all good. We’ve never been sponsored by a meal kit.

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah, now you won’t ever.

Dan Cederholm: No, and that’s fine, ‘cause we don’t want to be. Your hand must kill, right? Like-

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: I’m a lefty and maybe that’s what I believe.

Maggie Enterrios: Ooh, oh.

Dan Cederholm: I’m like … If I have to hand write things, and I just mean like Christmas card … Actually not. I don’t send Christmas cards.

Maggie Enterrios: That’s a totally different pain.

Dan Cederholm: Who am I kidding?

Dan Cederholm: Okay. Well, that’s what I was wondering. You know that pain like in between your thumb and your … Like-

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: You’re doing so much like … There’s just so much line work, it’s gotta hurt at the end of the day.

Maggie Enterrios: I … It does, but not so badly and it pales in comparison to writing thank you notes. Like, the pain-

Dan Cederholm: Oh, okay, so it is a different…It’s a different-

Maggie Enterrios: It is a totally different pain, but I cannot describe other than like two thank you notes in and I’m dead. I’m rubbing my wrist, like-

Dan Cederholm: Okay, that makes me feel better.

Maggie Enterrios: Maybe I just won’t send these cards. No, the only way I can describe it is I make really micro movements, so I don’t work … If I think of like a muralist who paints a stroke that goes from like far left to far right of your body, I’m not that physical in the way that I work, so I do work so zoomed in. Whether it’s manual or digitally, I work in a really small micro space, so all I’m doing is like the tiniest little swish and flick.

Dan Cederholm: I see.

Maggie Enterrios: It’s … Yeah, it’s really not as physical where when I’m like you, you’re writing thank you cards, it’s like downward pressure. You gotta get those G’s and H’s and I mean, it’s just … It’s so much more work.

Dan Cederholm: It really is.

Maggie Enterrios: I use tiny, tiny, tiny pens when I draw by hand, which if you apply a reasonable amount of pressure to them like there goes the nib. You’re lost.

Dan Cederholm: Oh, I see. Right. That’s gotta be light.

Maggie Enterrios: It’s all really light touch, but my brother-in-law had hand surgery and he … His physical therapist gave him this like hand muscle man … Like, it helps your muscles in your hand and he gifted it to me the other day, so I’ve been using that really … I’ll be great at rock climbing and drawing.

Dan Cederholm: I was gonna say, you’ll probably climb El Capitan with your one hand, like-

Maggie Enterrios: Yeah. Exactly.

Dan Cederholm: That sounded bizarre, but that was … What I thought was kind of a dumb question, but actually, that was really insightful, to be honest.

Maggie Enterrios: When you pull the quote out for this episode, it should probably be, “How to avoid hand pain with micro movements.”

Dan Cederholm: That’s the title.

Maggie Enterrios: Something like, “Thank you cards. More like, ‘no thank you, cards.’”

Dan Cederholm: I’ve never clapped on the podcast before. It was the first. That’s hilarious. Thank you so much for being on here.

Maggie Enterrios: Heard that one last clap. You’re so welcome. Thank you.