I found out last month that I was one of 10 winners of the 2012 ImagineFX Rising Stars competition. Now that the winners have been revealed in the latest issue I am honored to share this with everyone. I haven't received my copy yet so I don't know who the other winners and honorable mentions are, but I would like to extend a congratulations to them as well.
I would also like to thank Lou Anders for all the nice things he had to say about my work in the article.
I did an interview for them, and not all of it was published. So if you want to read some incoherent rambling they managed to edit down for the article I have included the full version below.
- First of all, how does it feel
to have been chosen as a
Rising Star?
I was completely surprised and
honored, I found out while I
was at the airport on my way to Illuxcon (an illustration
convention) I couldn’t
think of a better way to have
started the weekend.
- How long have you been making
art at a professional level?
Was there a time when it all clicked for you, where you
started working in a
style that you could call your own?
I started working professionally
about 4 years ago. I
would say everything started to click for
me in the months leading up to and then at the 2010
Illustration Master
Class. That is where I
painted Joan of
Arc and really began to understand my own artistic voice. Since then things have
exploded for me.
- Was there anything about your
upbringing that made a life
in art inevitable?
Actually it was quite the
opposite. I didn’t
really start drawing until I was 18 and even then it was only
a few days a week
as part of my degree in Digital Arts & Animation. Over time I grew to fall
in love with art and
shortly before I graduated I decided that was what I wanted to
do with my
life. My parents were
thrilled!
- Where do you currently work?
I am working freelance full-time
out of San Diego,
California. I am told
we have some of the
best weather in the world, I am thinking about going outside
and checking it
out one of these days.
- At what point are you now in
your art career?
It’s really hard to say as a
freelancer, especially this
early in. I wouldn’t
consider myself
" established" yet, but I am getting steady work and starting to attract some pretty
serious attention.
- Do you have an ideal work
position that you're aiming for
in the industry?
Eventually I would like to just
paint whatever I want,
whenever I please. I
don’t know if that
is a realistic goal or not though. and I am quite content to
just enjoy the
journey and try to give it my all along the way. Honestly, I wake up most
days and wonder how
the hell I made it this far.
- Have you studied art? Has there
been an inspirational
teacher/person that's encouraged you to take art seriously?
I first studied art as part of my
Digital Arts &
Animation at Cogswell Polytechnical College.
An instructor named Thomas Applegate taught me quite a
bit and was very influential
and encouraging in my switch over to traditional painting. From there I studied at
Watts Atelier of Arts
for about 5 years. Everyone
who taught
me there was incredibly inspirational but E.M. Gist in
particular acted as a
mentor of sorts and really helped me grow to where I am now.
- What are your artistic
strengths? (no false modesty now –
you have just been chosen by the industry leading artists as
the very best!!) -
What do people most mention to you when they see your artwork?
Portraiture and the use of light
and shadow are among my
biggest strengths, they tend to feed off each other as well. Just about everything else
has been a
weakness at some point. Thankfully
I can
be extremely persistent and disciplined. Those aren’t exactly
artistic strengths
per se, but they have allowed me work through just about every
artistic problem
that has been thrown at me over the years.
- How have your studies at
Illustration Master Class
directed you in the kind of art you create?
Illustration Master Class was an
amazing week that will stay
with me for the rest of my life.
It also
served as a catalyst for a whole lot of areas of art I was
working on to come
together and finally click. Ultimately,
I
would have to give credit to my years at Watts Atelier for
where I am today.
- Is your aim to depict a
realistic character/situation, or
a mood/feel that a viewer can inhabit? (or neither!)
I don’t really see those things
as being mutually exclusive,
quite the opposite in fact. I
think in
order to depict a realistic character or situation you have to
have a strong
sense of mood or emotion. I
have seen
exquisite renderings of humans that were devoid of any mood,
and therefore
never felt real to me. Conversely
I have
seen many a character painting that, while not as technically
brilliant, felt
incredibly real due to the artists skill
with mood. Rembrandt’s
portraits jump off
the canvas because he was an absolute genius at both.
- Would you ever move to digital
art? It's a lot quicker,
you know?!
Would you ever cook a steak in a
microwave because it is
quicker? I work
traditionally because I
have a passion for working on a real physical object. The discipline and
persistence I talked
about earlier stem from this passion and without those I am
nothing
artistically. I am
sure I could learn
the tools easily enough, but
I don’t
think I could really do what I do best on the computer.
-Any advice for aspiring artists?
I think a lot of
aspiring artists sell themselves
short in their work. The
most common
theme I see amongst intermediate level artists is simply a lack
of love and
effort put into the work, usually in the details and
backgrounds. So much of
what I do involves no great skill,
but a mere willingness to put the effort into every square inch
of the
painting. “Good enough”
is never good
enough in my opinion.
