I'm an amateur artist who is steadily building my artistic skills that laid dormant for so long. As an analytical and practical sort or person, I went into computing and engineering in college and thus my career. But this has never been entirely fulfilling work for me. Though it took me an absurdly long time to recognize it, artistic creativity is a necessary expressive outlet for me.

So over the past 9 years I've carved out some free time to explore a variety of artistic media. I began with woodworking by designing and building a custom electric guitar (image on here soon). The resulting "ChessMaster" guitar was the most creatively satisfying thing I had ever done up to that point. Later I built a custom Mission style cue rack to match our Brunswick Mission pool table, and a few other pieces (some still awaiting completion...)

The woodworking led quickly to an interest in wood turning, especially bowls and lidded vessels. So I've been a member of the American Association of Woodturners and two different area chapters for several years. All this woodwork hobby got put on serious hold when my wife and I were blessed with twin babies in 2004. Somewhere in that time frame I also managed to take a class and finally get to "turn" clay on a potter's wheel.

Life changed ... after reading many hundreds of (good and bad) picture and story books to the kids for nearly five years, I realized I wanted to write and illustrate children's books. I never appreciated their variety or potential until I read so many of them with my own children.

Though I have always had some ability to draw, I never studied it formally and had virtually no experience with other 2-dimensional media, especially painting. So this year I've been reading every interesting book on drawing or painting that I can, and I'm quickly building skills in what little free time I have. I also discovered a local life drawing group, and drawing there has already helped me tremendously. I've just started uploading some of my drawings and welcome any helpful critiques other Deviants may have to offer.