How it Started

The beginning of my exploration of art and design started around high school. I was mostly doing photography at that point in time. I took a few photo classes on the side just to improve my personal skills and not really thinking much of it. But took away a lot of the lessons when it came to composition, the balance of negative and positive space, lighting and so forth. However in between classes, I found myself drawing a lot. Mostly with graphite and color pencil, just every chance of free time I got I was just sketching. Fast forward to community college, I took many drawing classes also just for the sake of improving my skills for fun again and found myself really enjoying it.

The Digital Age

Towards my last semester at Erie Community College (ECC), I had the idea of creating retro/synth-wave inspired artwork but incorporating my passion of railroads with it. But the only way I could achieve the look properly is if I did the work digitally. Before this point I played around with some digital illustrations but didn’t really find much footing in it. Until one night I just decided to jump into it and see what would happen. Posted it to my social media like I do with most of my work and didn’t think anything of it. Then I started getting spammed with notifications. Shares, likes, comments, all about how people really liked it. Surprised by this, I did another. And another. And another. With each piece gaining very positive feedback each time.

Normally if I wanted to show someone my artwork for feedback or opinions, I was the one to innate it. Now people were starting to approach me about it. Asking about prints, commissions, even a few job offers in there too. And the people enjoying it were a mix who were fans of the subjects or just really enjoyed the design of the work. It really was a whole new experience for me and truthfully didn’t know exactly how to go about it. At this time at ECC I was enrolled in a water color course, the professor was a former graphic designer. So I asked her about what she thought of the style of work and what I should do. She liked the work a lot. Regardless of the subject matter she thought my designs were really well done. She also shared the work around and eventually a friend of hers who ran the Carnegie Art Center in North Tonawanda saw it and also liked the work a lot. Because of which, they invited me to have my work partake in a professional art auction being held to help fund the art center. I’ve never done anything like that before, and seeing my work being included with other’s who have been professional artist all their lives was truly a weird feeling. It was a huge morale boost. So I continued to make more.