About me

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have varied interests — illustration, computer programming, design and nature photography to name a few. I have been fortunate enough to have made all of those interests into a profession, either through my freelance work or as a visiting faculty member at the University level.

As the years go by, I find myself drawn towards a life dedicated to making art, telling stories and being creative.

The sheer pleasure of making art and telling stories that makes people smile, think and reminisce their own childhood is hard to describe. That makes illustration the most satisfying of all my professions; one that I will keep doing long after the other jobs are no longer viable or interesting.

This website

I love making websites and have been at it since 1999. This is the favourite of my many personal websites. It sits somewhere in between a portfolio website and an e-commerce store. The main purpose of this site is to let people who know me follow my work. It also serves as a pseudo e-commerce store where people can buy my art as framed prints or merchandise, though you can't buy directly from the website itself right now.

Warning: I ramble on after this. Not essential reading. You have been warned.

Values

A few things that shape my work:

• Storytelling: I have had a lifelong obsession with stories. Telling stories is why I make art. The art itself is just the medium. I have more stories in my mind than I have time to tell them. Without stories to tell, I would lose interest in making art.
• Originality: Creating original characters and telling my own stories is a big part of my work and it is what keeps me going.
• Animals and nature: It is perhaps, quite evident in my work that I love nature and animals. Most of my characters are anthropomorphic animals. Nature shapes my work in more ways than I can comprehend.
• Tangible art: The tangible nature of watercolour illustration makes me prefer traditional, hand-drawn art over digital. I do enjoy making the occasional digital piece and appreciate the convenience and possibilities, but given the choice, I would always choose to draw and paint on paper. It’s a thing of joy to hold a finished illustration on paper.
• Human Intelligence: As a computer engineer who loves computer programming, it hurts me to say that generative AI was a bad choice. Not because the output is bad, but because art and expression are innate human qualities. Machines should be left to do things humans cannot. The art in artificial isn’t as good as it is made out to be. Seeing how AI generated art is becoming more common, I want to ensure that the human touch isn’t lost by sharing my skills and making more art. Where is the joy in prompting a computer program to create art, compared to making it yourself, through skill, creativity and experience?

Influences

I am greatly influenced by the books and comics I read when growing up. Most notably the illustrations by Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), Hergé (Tintin), Alberto Uderzo (Asterix) and in Russian Children's literature. Also the classic Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes cartoons.

I first came across Hayao Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli animated films in 2002. These films still inspire me and make me want to tell my own stories. I only discovered the picture book Illustrations by Beatrix Potter and Quentin Blake much later in life but they inspire me greatly as well.

Outside this field, I find inspiration in nature, music and films. So clichéd that I hesitated to mention it, but it is the truth.

Tools

I love experimenting with art supplies, but most of my work is done using pencil, ink and watercolour (in that order). The brand does not matter, but since I get a lot of questions about this I'll list my most commonly used tools here:

• Pencils: Faber Castell 9000 (H, HB and 2B), and a Zebra Delguard Mechanical pencil with Pilot blue lead.
• Inking: Kuretake no. 8 brush pen, Muji fountain pen, Platinum Carbon Black ink.
• Paper: Any 100% cotton 300gsm+ watercolour paper I can get my hands on for my "finished" work, but a wide range of inexpensive paper and sketchbooks for doodles and non-watercolour illustrations.
• Watercolour paints: A mix of Sennelier and Van Gogh tubes and pans.
• Brushes: ^* Escoda Barroco and Reserva (#8, #6, #4 and #2), Winsor & Newton 7 (#1). A Pentel waterbrush is my most used brush though.
• Digital: Rare, but when I do, I use an iPad Air (5th gen) with the Apple Pencil and Procreate. I am lucky to have not fallen into the trap of buying brushes. The default Procreate brushes are more than I need.

^* These, rather expensive brushes were gifts. The brush is the least important of the three tools used to create watercolour art, behind paper and paints. You absolutely don't need expensive brushes to make high quality art, so don't go about spending money on these just because I listed them here, please.

I also love fountain pens and use them to doodle in my sketchbooks. Too many to name here (I could start an entire website on fountain pens). I use colour pencils and fountain pen ink washes too sometimes.

The brand of paint/brush/paper really does not matter in the end. Some of my favourite work was done using everyday art supplies. When I am working for a client I make sure I use the more expensive paints and paper, for their archival qualities more than anything else.