My PKSCoMiX Projects Blog

  My Journey as an Artist:  Part 5 As I went through the 90's I was still doing many small press illustrations as a freelance contract artist, however, in 1992 I learned how to work in watercolor paints and then began a career in doing landscapes in watercolor. I did watercolor paintings featuring mountains, trees, and oceans and had a fun time doing it.  As I got more experience in painting, I began to look for forums to showcase my paintings. I managed to find 2 galleries locally that were instrumental in showing my work. They were Pro Arts, and the Center for Visual Arts both located in Downtown Oakland. I got a vast amount of knowledge in how gallery preparation and shows worked and was able to display paintings in neighboring San Francisco. As the 90's began to wind down I purchased my first ever personal computer, which would yet again take my art journey into another direction. In part 6 of my journey, I will explore the early 2000s and how I made the jump from tradition

  My journey as an Artist Part 4: My life in the small press. After graduating from high school in 1984 I spent the next 5 to 6 years actively doing illustrations in the world of the small press. Organizations like SPWAO (small press writers and artists organization) made it possible for small press creators to communicate with small press publishers from around the country. It was our social media environment long before social media itself. Through this platform, I made contact with different small press publishers. One memorable one for me was The Gate. I did interior art for this publication for several years. It was a book about the paranormal.  Pictured here is one of my old copies of the book (cover was not done by me) from the late 80's. I did illustrations for a number of small press books in the realm of sci and horror as well. I also continued to work on my own comic projects. Coming up in part 5, we'll move into the 90's and how my artistic focused changed from

  My Journey as an Artist: Part 3 (The 80's) In 1980 I attended The Rennaissance Art School in Oakland California. It was a special school for students with artistic talents. I attended there and graduated in 1984. It was at this school that I was able to really build my skills as an artist in terms of illustration, drawing, and cartooning. On the creative side, I managed to introduce a whole new line of comic characters to the fellow students I went to school with.  The first Character I created was Moondog, who was a character based primarily on the Rex character I had just created in the gang. This character was dealt with a much darker and violent tone, as many of the comic stories created featured blood and gore. The character was created in spring of 1981 and shortly after that I created the Private Eyes in the fall of 1981. Also created throughout the 80's were characters like Tomato Man, Pretty Poison, and the Hemerodes.  I really enjoyed doing these comics featuring th

My Journey as an Artist   Part 2: Cartoons of the late 70's For the most part in the 70's I continued doing cartoons featuring my created characters X and O enjoying doing the stories of these 2 stick figure characters. However,  in 1978 I created a new line of characters which featured a mix of human and animal characters. The called this group of comic characters simply The Gang. The Gang featured a group of children characters lead by a boy named Leon as well as his friends and the pet dogs they all owned. After doing just a few art pages featuring all the characters I decided to focus more on just the dog characters, and I did full comic book stories featuring those characters. The characters featured REX who was the pet dog character of the boy Leon who was very outgoing and an expert skateboarder. The other characters featured his two best friends Kettleman and Lego as well as Rex's girl Daisy. I did 2 comic books featuring the characters. One called " Rex &

My Journey as an Artist Part 1: The very early years As far back as I can remember my earliest days of being an artist came around 1970 in Oakland California where I grew up. Only at the age of 4 at that time I did manage to use the only means I had to create images at the time to come up with a couple of what I thought at the time were very unique characters. Not having a pencil or paper at the time I actually used to play with dirt outside of our home. The other siblings and I would get dirt from the backyard and spread it on the smooth cement on the ground sort of creating a dark canvas. We would then use popsicle sticks to draw pictures on the dirt canvas. I drew a lot of different things during that time however the two characters I remember creating at that time was a duo known as X and O. X and O were two very simple characters basically based off of the tic tac toe game which I had recently just learned about around the age of 4. The characters themselves were loveable enough,

  I am currently enjoying sharing my current work and projects with all of you. However, I think it's time to share a little bit more about my past and how I got here. My early inspirations and what drove me to be an artist in the first place, as well as all the different twists and turns my artist journey has taken me through the decades of the 70's, 80's, 90's, as well as the current decades in the new Millenium. I look forward sharing this look back with all of you in up-and-coming posts in the future. As always feel free to leave comments about any thoughts you may have. I look forward to hearing from you!