humans have meandered into this page.
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It all started a few years ago because I was stressed out... very stressed out at work. I was out with my friend Jim when I ran into the book. (No... not the bible, silly!) The book was Learn to draw Mickey and Minnie. It's one of those books that is tailored towards children. You know the type... the ones that have text the size of your thumb and make you feel stupid just for picking it up, but I figured, "So what?" Well, I enjoyed drawing when I was in middle school. I reasoned that I should do this to blow off some steam. I got the book and a sketchpad and started off. Well, it did help me relax and spawned off one of my favorite hobbies. From cartooning, I went to pencil sketches. I then started toying around with colored pencils and pastels, but never really got very far with them. I've since started doing digital illustrations. All the images and buttons on my pages are done by yours truly.
Okay, I suppose that this leads into a pet peeve of mine. A number of folks ask why I never describe myself as an artist since I draw. Now, let's look at the definition of the word artist, shall we…
art-ist [áartist] (plural art-ists) nounEncarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
- creator of art: somebody who creates art, especially paintings, drawings, or sculptures
- skilled person: somebody who does something with great skill and creativity - an artist with a basketball
- performer: a member of the performing arts - a well-known recording artist
- cunning person: somebody who is very good at doing something, especially something involving cunning or deceit (slang) - a ripoff artist
So in other words, for me to call myself an artist, I would have to believe that I have skill or that I'm gifted at it. And I personally don't think that I'm qualified to judge my own work. Look at it this way, it is similar to a woman calling herself beautiful (regardless of what others may think); I'm sure many people have issues with that.
Although admittedly, definition number four when applied to deceit does appeal to me. [Insert evil laughter here...]
So, I'm quite flattered when others refer to me as an artist. [Really, I am] Just don't ever expect for me to refer to myself that way. I much prefer the term illustrator when referring to myself. Similarly, I also never refer to my drawings and illustrations as art. Anyway, enough said.
| This is where I first started illustrating… with cartoons. I was just thumbing through an old sketchbook and found these. As I find more I'll scan them and put them here. |
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As I continued to do more cartooning, I found that I developed a good control over continuous tones with pencil. I figured with a little practice I could render some pencil sketches fairly well. This is my collection of pencil sketches. |
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| As for the digital images, I'll put some up as soon as I put together something more presentable. My first will probably be a tropical sunset. I've been using mostly Metacreations Painter, which is frankly (no pun intended) an amazing program. |
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When I first thought about putting together a deluxe guestbook. I wanted to have each guest pick a favorite Disney character. I was finally able to put a big enough collection of guestbook characters together. |
February 4, 1998