Today we’d like to introduce you to Austyn Slavych.
Hi Austyn, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started drawing around the 5th grade. I had a friend who was an amazing artist. Like, he read one of those “how to draw comic book characters” books and just immediately was incredible. I wasn’t, but I also really liked caricatures, so I would practice with my classmates, which actually got me into a bit of trouble because some people weren’t happy about it. I picked drawing back up around the age of 19, when I thought I wanted to be a tattoo artist. I asked my brother’s best friend, who at the time had the number 2 tattoo parlor in Houston, if I could be his apprentice. He asked me for my portfolio, and I said, “Sure,” while thinking, “What the hell is a portfolio?” So I bought a book called “How to Draw Real Faces” and immediately fell in love with portrait art. I liked doing this a lot more because it felt much less permanent than tattoos.
At this point in my life, I was an after-school day care counselor for the YMCA, and when it would get closer to final pick up time, I would pull out my art supplies and get to practicing. This caught the attention of one of the parents, who encouraged me by saying, “You have a talent that I cannot do, that I’m willing to pay for. Please let me pay you to draw portraits of my children. And also, you should never do this kind of work for free.”
I didn’t do anything art-related while I was off at university, getting my bachelor’s. During this time, my little sister constantly encouraged me to try working with acrylic, which felt like a big move since if I messed up with pencil or charcoal, I could just erase and try again. It wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I started drawing again as a stress relief from work. It was around this time that I decided to dabble in painting. I bought sample paints from Home Depot and would paint on wooden sheets because this was a super cheap way to do this. What I learned was that paint was actually easier to work with, because if you mess up, you just paint over it.
As I started leaning into painting, I also started dating someone who would become my future ex-wife. She had gone to school for art, and her expertise and guidance pushed me to become an even better artist and painter, to the point where people began to commission me to paint things for them. My art began to reflect my interests, so it became mostly video game and anime-related. I continued painting commission pieces for a few years until I was commissioned to paint a dog, which, in my hubris, I decided to take on. I hit a point where the art no longer felt like my fun hobby. It had become my “side hustle”. I hated what the relationship had become, so I took a step back from it.
When I picked art back up, I started painting things that brought me joy. Unfortunately, at the same time, I was going through a separation that led to my divorce. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, I decided to go to coffee shops and watercolor the scenery. I got into watercolors in a big way during this time period. It quickly became my favorite art medium in the way that it taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes, and the flaws are just a part of the piece. I continued doing this for months. Then, in October of 2023, I had a dream. “What if I took famous horror movie scenes, but replaced the characters with anime and video game characters. So for the entire month, I was painting my favorite Nintendo characters into horror movies. When October was over, I pushed this idea further into, “what if I just put my favorite video game and anime characters into any historic photo?” And after what felt like 2 decades, I had finally found what felt like my own voice in my art.
A great friend and owner of local Austin brewhouse Slackers Brewery, Dereck Law, pushed me to not only display my art on the walls of his brewhouse but also to invest in prints of my art to sell. Interestingly enough, my next-door neighbor works at a local Austin printshop, 360Print. So it felt like all the pieces were right in front of my face, and I no longer had any excuses not to jump into this. I started creating prints and putting together my booth in January of 2024, getting into small local pop-up markets. And then in 2025, I purchased my LLC for Austyn Heath Art. And now I continue to draw parodies of iconic movie scenes and historic photos, but with video game and anime characters. I turned painting what I enjoy into more than just my hobby. And that’s pretty much my journey as an artist. I continue to spread the joy of art around as much as I can. I also do my best to inspire others to follow any path into having an artistic hobby as well. My favorite thing is to watch others get passionate about their hobbies!
You can find me at conventions and on instagram @austyn_heath_art or working out on @AustynPumps.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It hasn’t been a smooth road. The biggest struggles I’ve faced have always been fear-based. Fear that I won’t be good enough. Fear that the piece won’t spark joy in the person who commissioned it. Mostly fear that I’m not a good artist. Every single time I pushed past those fears, the piece had come together in amazing ways. Now, it’s the imposter syndrome that likes to take hold of me from time to time. As if I don’t really belong in the art community, or I don’t belong selling my art, or people aren’t going to get it. Time and time again, people always prove me wrong. All ages as well.
The paperwork part was always the easiest. Getting my LLC literally took 4 hours. Getting the prints took a conversation. Getting my art hung up on a wall was also just a conversation. But the fear of rejection was always so loud and paralyzing.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work is pretty uneventful, to be honest. I am a User Interface/ User Research designer. I work for a payroll company where I design different portions of our software to be easier and efficient to use for our clients. I think the interesting part about what I do is that I didn’t realize this was even a job until about 2019. Before this I was a manager at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, and it was such a beat down. 8 years of being a manager and almost 16 years in the service industry had not only taken a toll on me mentally, but it was also draining me physically. So in 2019, I took an aptitude test on a website called Career Karma and found out about UX/UI. I decided to take out a small loan, jump into an academy, and 3 years later, not only did I more than double my salary, but I also have a much better quality of life.
Personally, I wish that we would treat our service industry staff with much better respect and pay them livable wages. It’s a travesty that so many of them have to work 2 to 3 jobs just to live. I got really lucky with the opportunity to get out of the service industry, but I was truly happy until I couldn’t afford to be stressed.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I can’t think of anything.
Pricing:
- My stickers are $3 for 1 or $5 for 3
- My prints are $20 for 1 or $35 for 2
- My commissions vary.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austyn_heath_art/
Image Credits
All of the images are created by me.
The photo of my booth was taken by my beautiful girlfriend Luci Chung
