Introduction

Hi All!

I've followed Small Pax for a long time and very much enjoy the work that is posted here by so many talented illustrators whose work covers so many different styles. It's a pleasure to join the group. I only get to draw on occasion, so don't expect I'll be posting often. However, I'll relish the opportunity to share some of my artwork with you, and hopefully learn a thing or two.

I've been asked for a post introducing myself: so here it goes. There's not much to say, really. I'm almost entirely self-taught. Mostly I enjoy doing simple illustrations with pencil, pen, and ink. I don't have a set style by any means. Lately I've paid a lot of attention to Matthew Alderman and Daniel Mitsui, and have tried to learn from them a bit. However, I also used to draw a lot of anime back in high school, and I think that it's undeniable that it has influenced my way of drawing quite a bit, for better or for worse. One good thing it did teach me was how to use an art marker pretty well. I also very occasionally try my hand at an oil painting, though I haven't since 2008 or so.

The illustration featured here was a baptism gift for my nephew. It's done with micron pens, though for the most part you can't see the strokes because I increased the contrast of the digital file. I looked at a lot of art nouveau and pre-raphaelite images for inspiration, as well as drawings by Mr. Alderman. It's a style (or mixture of styles) I had long admired but never tried before. I'm hoping to make a few more illustrations for poems, though I expect the tone in those will be more whimsical as they'll be paired with poems from Belloc's Bad Child's Book of Beasts.