In order to offset the design I do professionally, I have dedicated a lot of time in recent years to delving into various personal art/design projects. The ones showcased here are my more recent pieces, and I'm really proud of them. I find a

lot of enjoyment in compositing imagery together, but I've also wanted to get better at digitally painting things. These pieces often end up being a mixture of both as I continue to find my confidence at creating things entirely from scratch.

I'm a huge fan of the film 'Dark City'. And it just so happened that the writer/producer of that film, David S. Goyer, was on a recent episode of the Nerdist podcast. As he discussed the trials of making the movie, I had an image flash into my head from the very beginning of the movie. The main character accidentally knocks over a fishbowl containing a single goldfish, and as the fish lay flopping on the floor, he gently picks it up and places it in the bathtub. I always

found this scene fascinating on a visual and symbolic level. So, as I drove home that evening, I saw in my mind the goldfish floating in the air, framed by the porthole window from that bathroom. So, I set forth trying to do my best to create it digitally, and it became known as 'Awakening'. It was created mostly from scratch in Photoshop, with a little bit of compositing. It's my homage to such a great film.  

I was a huge fan of the True Detective series on HBO. Sure, the second season didn't have the same finesse as the first season. But, it still had it's great moments. And one of these moments was Vince Vaughn's character Frank Semyon's final walk through the desert. I found it so compelling and inspiring as I watched it for the first time, and it seemed a subject fitting for a painting. I wanted to capture 

Frank's stubbornness and refusal to be controlled, even in the face of death. Rather than rely on compositing, I wanted to create as much of it as possible from scratch. This was my first time painting an entire person, and it gave me a lot of confidence to do similar projects in the future. This image was created entirely in Photoshop.

The idea for this came to me a few months back on a drive home one evening (as many ideas do on my long commutes). I had recently seen a really striking photograph of a singer by the name of Kelela a couple days before and it wouldn't leave my mind. So I decided to use that as inspiration for this piece,

which I came to call 'Novi Dei' or 'New Gods'. In addition to working in Illustrator to create the digital halo, and Photoshop for the majority of the rest, I ended up dabbling in an entirely new 3D program called Daz3D. This allowed me to create the exact hand position I wanted her to have.