Another round of answers

-what is your tumblr theme?

I dont know. stop asking me. I get this same question every week. please, please stop asking me what my tumblr theme is.

-are there any art schools that you recommend for illustration?

Having only been to one, I can’t really say that i recommend certain schools being better at which to study illustration than others. What I can say is this though. Higher tuition, does not mean better. Just because all-star artists may have come out the previous years, does not mean better. The amount of awards a school may rake in during annual competitions, does not mean better. Schools are businesses in the end, and there’s an element of publicity that they all cater to. What’s going to allow you to have a better education is yourself, period. If you’re looking for a place to learn, go off of what your budget looks like, what fields you’re looking into and how well you think you could adapt to life there. Students put way too much weight onto how prestigious a school’s name may sound. In the end, if you’ve got the tenacity to become better, you will. Just make sure you surround yourself in an environment that can help it grow.

-I saw your materials list for your grayscale drawings, but what do you do about color?

How I handle the color depends on the piece. If its for gallery work, I’ll do the piece in acrylic washes with colored pencils so that it remains all traditional. For illustration jobs I generally keep the color saved till after I finish a graphite drawing and add the color digitally with glazes on different layers/settings. One of these days i’ll put a tutorial up showing that process. one day. 

-Do you ever find time to collaborate with other artists?

Ehhhhh I dont unfortunately. I would love too. It’s really cool to be friends with so many great artists that it seems like it’d be a waste to not spend a little time working on some collab pieces. Usually, the main problem is finding the time to do it and being able to come up with a unique idea that would be a stronger piece than if I were to do it alone. I tend to have a limited amount of free time, so that when I do get a chance at a new piece, all I want to do is spend it on my own stuff.

-Do you have any crazy projects in the works? Have you got something new planned already, or are you more focused on your freelance work at the moment?

As of right now, about half my work that I haven’t been able to show yet is split between freelance projects and group gallery shows. I cant talk about too much, but I’m currently working on a book cover, along with some more trading cards, a couple sweet magazine jobs, and hoping to knock out some more jewelry like the Cybil set sometime in the next couple months. At any given time I usually have around 10 or more pieces I havent put up yet.

-I feel like I am Forcing graphite to be something that it isn’t with my mark making, how do you make such beautiful smooth textures while keeping detail to create images that have such a mysterious quality?

I tend not to use graphite as it might traditionally be used, since most the values in my drawings are erased away rather than shaded in. Using a kneaded eraser on a graphite-heavy surface softens the edges and gradations, opposed to harsher lines when you’re putting pencil straight onto an image. I tend to find myself doing a lot of glazing when it comes to adding shadows, and using tissues a lot of the time, so I get a steady value across large areas. I really hate taking a thin pencil to stark, white paper, because it never seems to turn out as soft as what I can create with an eraser. The best advice I can give is map out all the large shapes with your erasing and then slowly work your way into the smaller details with the pencil.

-Do you think you are considered “popular” on Tumblr? 

I cant really justify as popular or not on something like tumblr. Whenever I look at my news feed on tumblr, I always find some really really inspiring and creative stuff that tends to have much lower reblogs that random, crappy fan art. I feel like it’s all based around the flow and tastes of the popular groups that use tumblr, which seems to be 15 year old girls, so it’s sometimes hard to distinguish how popular something is in terms of its creative value, versus popular taste for a small portion of the entire art-viewing community. So I guess no, I dont really see myself as that popular on tumblr. That being said though, I love the tumblr community and use it as my main blog because the ability to share things is so practical.