About

Artist Statement

I started drawing when I was about 7 years old and it was a picture of a Cleveland Browns football player (Bernie Kosar) that I saw in the news paper. I don't even know what made me do it, I just picked up a pencil and piece of notebook paper and started drawing! My parents and friends thought I traced it because it was so detailed and close to the picture!

After that I would just draw everything and anything. I was obsessed with drawing. The majority of things I drew when I was younger was cartoon and comic characters. Lots of batman drawings, superman, spider man, cartoons like bugs bunny, Elmer Fudd, Donald duck, Simpsons, family guy, you name it! I would look at something, and draw it.

I had this thing where I would see things and think "that would be cool to draw" - and then I would draw it. I wasn't the kind of artist that could just come up with something in my head and draw it, but I had the ability to look at something and draw it with incredible detail. I used to take black and white photo's and draw them, take pictures, and ask my family if they can tell which one was the original!

During my senior year of high school I entered an art competition to apply for an art school (Art Institute of Pittsburgh) and I came in 2nd place, earning a full scholarship. After moving to Pittsburgh to attend art school, I realized that it wasn't for me. Drawing is my passion, it makes me happy, I love to do it, and I do it for me. In art school, it was all business and just way to serious. They tried to change the way I drew and show me how I should look at things, basically change my style of drawing.

To me, that defeats the whole purpose because art is all about the individual and their style! I was hoping to learn new skills or techniques, not to be told I was doing it all wrong. There is no right or wrong way to do art, that's what art is! All of the sudden, something I loved to do most of my life up to that point and something that made me so happy, wasn't fun or enjoyable anymore so I decided to stop going to school.

Over the next decade I moved quite a bit, met a beautiful women, got married, had kids, just lived life. I never stopped drawing, but I did not draw nearly as much as I used too, just randomly when I had time. In 2011, we moved to the island of Maui, HI to be closer to my wife's family, I fell in love with the ocean and everything in it! I always loved the ocean, was always fascinated by sharks, but getting into the water and experiencing ocean wildlife in their environment was truly amazing!

I started drawing a lot more, this time drawing sea turtles, sharks, dolphins, whales, things we were seeing in the water. Needless to say, I was hooked! I became obsessed with drawing ocean wildlife, sea turtles and sharks being my absolute favorite thing to draw. I started drawing on a regular basis again and really worked to perfect my skills to create the most realistic pencil drawings of these amazing animals.

Now I pretty much draw ocean wildlife exclusively, all though occasionally I draw Disney characters for my youngest daughter!

All of my drawings are done with only a 0.7mm mechanical pencil, a blending stick, and a mono eraser.