PAINTING NEW WORLDS

One of the first and most significant childhood memories I have is of sitting on the hard, green-painted concrete floor in my Phoenix, Arizona, bedroom and drawing the Star Wars action figures I saw in a toy catalogue. I then cut them out and used them as surrogate 2-dimensional action figure toys.

In the tangible world I’ve worked in graphite pencils, colored oil pencils, ink, and the occasional oil or acrylic paint. Being born in 1972, I grew up in the twilight era of hand-painted illustrations and graphic design. In fact, my mid-90s university illustration curriculum still relied almost exclusively on physical media.

As digital software became more prevalent in the early 2000’s, I made the leap and began teaching myself photoshop and other software. I used these programs to augment my pencil drawings, painting in the black-and-white graphite.

In the modern era, I use Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter to digitally paint the universes I create. These have the advantages of not needing time to dry, but I do miss the smell of turpentine.