About Mayzart

My name is May Camp. When I was about eight years old, I saw a book titled "Mozart", and thought, "That sounds like someone's saying Mo's Art!" Since I enjoyed making crafts and art, it was only fitting that I extended this concept to become my brand: May's Art, or Mayzart.

I did a lot of craftwork and drawing when I was little, and started drawing more seriously in High School, but I also had a lot of other interests. I ended up going to a university for Computer Science. I got my Computer Science Bachelor's degree in four years, and then worked as a Software Engineer for four years after that. However, while I was in college/work, I didn't have as much time to do art and other interests as I would have preferred.

One of the biggest regrets that people have on their deathbeds is spending their entire lives doing what is expected of them rather doing what they dreamed of doing.

I learned about this and thought, ‘well I should learn from their mistakes and do what I dream of doing!’ There was just one problem: what do I dream of doing? I have so many interests in life, how can I pick only one?

After years of intense thought, emotional distress, self-discovery, failure, and success, I realized there is an important factor in many things I enjoy doing: I love creating. I grew up making crafts, drawing, painting, story-writing, music-writing, taking pictures, animating, and I wanted to be an artist. What stopped me was the fear of failure, fear that I wasn’t good enough to make it, fear that I wouldn’t be able to make enough money to support myself and would be struggling for the rest of my life.

So I tried it and faced my fears head-on, because I felt I’d rather take the risk than to be on my deathbed, looking back, and wishing I would have at least tried my best and given one of my dreams a chance.

Art takes a long time to make, and I have a difficult time letting go of my originals because I love them too much. One method to get around this was to do photography, so that I could sell prints instead. In the beginning of doing art as a profession, I focused my efforts on learning how to use a professional DSLR camera and take professional photos. I had gotten a lot of compliments on my photos in the past, so I at least have an eye for beautiful shots, and I needed to get out more, so this was a fun way to explore!

I’ve since learned a lot about how to use a camera, and pretty much all of my photos are taken in Manual Mode, to have better control over the resulting image. I’ve found that I really enjoy small things that people may not always notice, and showing how they look up-close. I have a 1:1 macro lens, but one of these days (when I can afford it, so it will be a long time), I’d like to invest in a camera lens that magnifies the image.

After learning how to get photography prints made, I realized it wouldn’t be all that much of a learning curve to create art prints too, so that people could have a way to buy my art without me letting go of the original. I didn’t realize that people would be interested in prints, but I was pleasantly surprised!

The next thing I focused on was creating a YouTube channel. I've always enjoyed watching art get created from start to finish, so I decided to do something like that. And I also enjoy helping people, so offering tips was something I thought I’d do there as well.

I started getting more serious about doing YouTube videos on October 1, 2019. This was during an Inktober Ink Art Challenge, so I had plenty of content to create for YouTube. However, I burned out pretty quick. It turns out, YouTube is more of a marathon than a sprint. It takes a lot of time and effort to gain a following on YouTube, so it may be years before I even start earning money there. (In 2025, I’m still not even close, despite how much time and effort I’ve put into it)

I would need 4000 hours watched within the last 12 months, and 1000 subscribers in order to become monetized on YouTube. The income may not end up being much, but hopefully this can become another revenue stream for me.

In combination with YouTube, I’ve also been trying to gain a following on Patreon. This website allows people to support me monetarily, every month, in exchange for rewards that I would offer. I haven't gotten any support from there so far, but it is something that I'll keep up in hopes that it will go somewhere someday.

Drawing is the medium in which I have the most skill. The majority of my time in high school was spent drawing, since I had so much free time after completing my assignments in class. I learned how to shade really well with a pencil and have a lot of art focusing on the shading technique I use.

I also did a lot of coloring while I was in elementary school. I managed to figure out a way to make Crayola colored pencil look very nice. More recently, I've switched to Prismacolor colored pencil, as it is softer and is easier to blend.

However, drawing in general does take a long time to complete, and it's not very forgiving on the hands. So I may shift my focus to Painting.

I'm still new to painting; it's a very different medium from drawing. However, I am learning a lot, and there are definitely art skills that are transferable from drawing to painting that are helping me along. My plan is to paint so much that I no longer feel so attached to my work; that way, I can finally sell original art. In the meantime, hopefully people will still be interested in prints!

I have been working on digital art as well. It is nice to not need to buy materials that take up space and don’t always work out the way I want. I invested in a drawing tablet, and have been enjoying experimenting with different brushes and styles to make digital art. It was also much easier to take a timelapse video of my drawing process without having to set up a whole physical camera system for it.

I’ve done origami since I was a child, and tried to sell them to my friends at 9 years old, but with no luck. In high school and college, I took on a challenge to make 1000 paper cranes, and since I didn’t want to waste paper, I made them using only 1x1 inch pieces of paper. I only used my fingers for it, no tools except for scissors to make sure that the paper was the right size.

After completing the challenge, I decided to have some fun and make a stop motion video with the paper cranes, which ended up being my first ever youtube video. If I have more time, I would like to make more stop motion videos, but it’s not a high priority for me right now.

I happened upon some extremely tiny bottles with corks that looked incredibly cute, and I realized that I could put my mini origami cranes in them! Then I realized that people wanted to buy them and that started another path in my art profession.

This is another thing I played around with as a child, and I’m rediscovering it now as an adult.

It’s my next big project, stay tuned!

My other creative interests (that I may or may not be working on at any given time) include: novel writing and character/world building for stories, paper mache and other crafts, 3D printing, stop motion animation, hand-drawn traditional animation, making/playing music on the piano and guitar, making music electronically, game design, app/program design, and UX design.

I have many other interests that are not art related. For those who are curious, here is the nonexhaustive, yet extensive list (in no particular order): cognitive and behavioral psychology and sociology, analysis, solving puzzles, computer programming, artificial intelligence and machine learning (programming it), philosophy, epistemology, ethics, logic, math, science, self-improvement, staying mentally and physically healthy, being prepared, others’ perspectives, juggling, fencing, bouldering (rock climbing without ropes/harnesses), playing non-fps video games, playing board games, watching good movies/tv/youtube videos, reading, literary analysis, learning, teaching, justice, laws and the court system, debates, body language, animals, the environment, nature, hiking, cats, and dragons.