When I first saw Star Wars I was six years old and my head was swimming with ideas for spaceships and aliens. I started drawing almost immediately. I remember my parents purchasing The Star Wars Sketchbook with sketches by Joe Johnston. It was one of the first things I saw that made me realize that there were people who drew spaceships for a living. I would study over and over the books, pouring over every detail. I don't know how many times I copied Joe Johston's drawings. My grandmother was a former fashion illustrator and art teacher so it was nice to have a family that was very supportive in my artistic endeavors, though I imagined they wished I would stop drawing so many spaceships and monsters.
What is your background in art?
I started taking art classes at an early age and just always drew. I jumped around from art schools studying art history and painting. I had aspirations of being a fine artist, but I always drew these fantasy things on the side. Even in art history I found myself more drawn to the book illustrators of the late 1800's than fine art. Eventually when the Star Wars Special Editions came out, I found that I just kept drawing Star Wars. At that point I just fully embraced the fact I wanted to be an illustrator.
A family member worked for NASA and I ended up doing a drawing of a rocket for the cover a report. I had done some artwork locally for brochures and calendars, but this felt like the big time. I did it when I was pretty young and I often wish I could go back in time and do it better, but it still gave me confidence to carry on. Years later I would say my career really started when I did some artwork for a Call of Cthulhu collectible card game. One of the pieces was even included in the book The Art of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. I was on my way.
Who are your major influences?
My major influences all stem from my interest in art history. When working in color I'm often looking at Frank Schoonover (the original Princess of Mars artist in 1917) or William Waterhouse. I love the line work of John R Neil who is best know on his work on the Oz books and William Oberhardt who did Time magazine covers in the 1920's is a huge influence on how approach sketch cards especially on the Indiana Jones sets. That said, throw in the Star Wars artists Ralph McQuarrie, Doug Chiang, Dave Dorman and Killian Plunkett into the mix and you'll see where my style comes from.
Who is your current favorite artist? Who is your favorite Star Wars artist?
I think my favorite current artist is James Jean. He manages to convey such a sense of mood in a cover. If you haven't seen his work I really recommend checking out his covers for the comic Fables. As for current Star Wars artists I love them all -- from concept artists to illustrators. Killian Plunkett's work is really beautiful and Doug Wheatley's comic pages are amazing. Tommy Lee Edwards manages to convey such a sense of movement. Jon Foster has an amazing approach. It's pretty hard to pick a favorite.
Back during Celebration 3, I showed my stuff around. It was well received but wasn't what Lucasfilm was looking for. My images often use old textures and old paper to give a sense of history to the piece. By Celebration 4, the new Indiana Jones was in the works and those old papers and textures were a perfect fit for Indy 4. I ended up doing licensing work and my images were used on posters and covers. It was really an exciting time and I ended up quitting my job at an art museum to work on illustration full-time. I was so excited to see a fake stamp I had created used on StarWars.com to advertise the Indiana Jones shop. Topps ended up using my artwork on a card and then with some help of some artist friends I was working on sketch cards.
My first Star Wars work I did that really got any exposure was for a local club known as The Moisture Farm Co-op. From there I did some art for a fan project on TheForce.net. I've been doing all the posters for the annual Mr. Star Wars event at DragonCon. I've worked on The Clone Wars sketch cards and Star Wars Galaxy 4 sketch cards for Topps. I'm always drawing Star Wars for myself and am hoping more projects are around the corner.
