Artist, Designer & Illustrator

Q. Describe the most common types of jobs you do for your clients.

A. The primary media that I work in are colored pencil and colored charcoal pencil. I have the most experience with colored pencil, but I also work great with acrylic paint, oil paint, oil pastels, and graphite.

As far as subject matter goes, I've done quite a few portraits of people, a few pet portraits, cars, buildings and motorcycles. I like a challenge so the more variety, and the more random the requests are that people have, the better!

Q. What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?

A. Price is something that is usually not thought-through completely. In a perfect world, a customer would come to me saying "I have a budget of $500 for this project, I would like this done in acrylic paint on canvas, about 24" x 36" and here's a photo to get you started." Of course, people usually don't even know what size they want.

Typically they provide me with a picture and want me to give them an estimate based on that. I really like it when customers can give me a price maximum that they'd like to spend because then I can give you a more realistic idea of what medium, size and customization I can do. As long as your request isn't outrageous I will try to create something that will be less than that maximum.

Your time line is also an important factor to consider in advance as well. If you need an oil painting done in 2 weeks, then that simply isn't going to happen. Oil paint takes ATLEAST 6 months to cure after it's finished so I won't ship oil paintings for at least that long. I can complete small (up to 12" x 14") drawings within about 2 weeks depending on the detail, number of subjects, coverage, etc.

Q. How did you decide to get in your line of work?

A. I've been drawing since I was a kid (though not so well at first as would be expected) and it wasn't until high school that I really started getting into drawing. I dropped a Spanish class just so I could take two more art classes in it's place during freshman year. As a [high school] Senior I managed an internship at Crooked Brook (www.crookedbrook.com) and learned quite a bit about fashion and apparel design, web building, pattern-making and lots of other things that I use today with building my freelance career.

Q. Describe your most recent project, what it involved, how much it cost, and how long it took.

A. The last drawing I did was of a dog sitting on a couch. Her name was Missie, she recently passed away and the woman was looking to have a memorial portrait done of Missie.

The customer sent me two photos, one had a better pose, while the other one showed Missie wearing pink bows in her hair, holding a comb between her paws. I combined both photos, using the pose from the first one and including the bows and comb from the second one. I had to have the comb laying beside her though, simply because of the way the paws were hanging over the couch.

The drawing is 8" X 10," done in colored pencil and cost $100. The total time it took to complete was 8.5 hours, over the course of 9 days.