The Artist

Artist at 4 years

Drawing has been a part of my life as far back as 1983. For some that may not be such a long time ago. That year is ancient to me, I was four years old then. I can remember very clearly when I began my life long journey in art. As a young lad in my grandmothers old house on an indian reservation, I picked up my first piece of paper with the intention to drawing something. I can’t remember what it was that I started drawing. If I had to guess, I would guess it was a crocodile.My father showed interest in my attempt. He picked up thta little piece of paper and in about 10 seconds he drew the head of a crocodile.

Seeing that swift creative act opened to the world of art. When I saw is creative feat I thought to myself that I had to do it too. The next few minutes my father continued to show me some quick techniques. He showed me how to draw a ribbon and a desert canyon using the same squiggly line. He showed me that with a few lines you can decide the kind of picture you were going to draw. His first lesson taught me to understand that a single squiggly line could be anything you wanted it to be.

In grade school I was that kid who could draw. I have to say that I never really minded it. Going to new schools it help me to make friends pretty quickly. Kids are so silly, I remember one time a kid I met at a bowling alley was convinced that I was Jim Davis because I drew him a picture of Garfield. Ahhh memories.

Conan, an early comic I read.

My father was responsible for the second greatest moment in my art history. He introduced me into comics. On thing I thought was pretty neat about my dad was that he had a huge comic collection. Well, to me it was huge. He had an assortment of old 70’s marvel comics like Conan, The Thing, Power Man and Iron Fist, Spider-Man, X-Men, Uncanny X-men, Alpha Flight and the list goes on and on. He told me that my uncle learned anatomy by studying comic books. My uncle was an artist in his teens back then. He is the best artist I know.  Seeing an artist like him create something that was extremely detailed entirely out of his imagination was something I just knew that I wanted to do. So I picked up the comics and began to study them.

A scanned image of one of my anatomy studies from my early teen years.

That continued till I was in middle school. At that age I was sick of copying artwork. I felt that I was ready to make my own. So began my summers of studying anatomy through medical books from the library. I wasted my summers in the house drawing instead of playing football like a normal kid. My middle school years passed and soon after my high school years went away.

I still constantly practiced my skills. Some say I was self taught but I have to admit if it wasn’t for GOD, I could never of achieved to the level I have obtained. So I give my thanks to him.

Well….. I would like to thank you for your time reading about me, take a look at my portfolio. If you have any questions or would like to start a quote, please feel free to contact me.