We’re pleased to welcome Tim Murphy, an illustrator from St. Louis, Missouri, as HileItes’ guest blogger today. We love the opportunity to showcase talented artists like Tim. Thanks, Tim, for being part of HileItes.

Hello all! Greetings from chilly St. Louis, Missouri. When Dave asked me to contribute a guest blog post to this space and discuss my work, I thought about the ongoing recession and how it mirrors the one during which I got my start. I decided to take a brief look at the early experiences that shaped my style, and detail how the skills I was forced to learn in a recession contributed directly to whatever success I may have eventually found. Hope you enjoy.

In 1995, fresh out of college and eager to become fabulously wealthy doing little more than doodling Wolverine in the margins of my notepad, I instead found that my hometown of St. Louis featured a creative industry centered around beer and little else. Never much of a drinker, and more naïve and snobbish than I realized at the time, I held my nose and accepted a role in a digital imaging group at a mid-sized sales promotion agency. Due to the recession, senior workers were being snubbed in favor of eager young (read: cheap) talent, so in retrospect it was a fabulous and rare opportunity to break into an industry that usually required years of experience. But, green as I was, I didn’t realize it at the time. Read the rest of this entry »