Finding My Style
Read about my artistic journey through decades of creative exploration and practice.
Good Art Takes Time
As far back as I can remember, I’ve been creating art. From crayons to oil paints and just about everything else, I’ve always had a passion to produce visually appealing artwork. While it’s certainly satisfying to step back and look at a finished piece of art after hours of effort, it’s the process that I appreciate the most. It’s like meditation for me.
While I’ve been told that I have a natural talent and ability for creating art, it has taken decades of practice and experimentation to get to where I am today. I believe this is the case for most artists. It takes a certain devotion to the craft. It takes a drive to push the limits of artistic ability and expand into new and unfamiliar territory. Progress comes from stepping out of our comfort zone. Over the course of my life, I’ve continued to explore new (to me) frontiers of artwork, which has contributed immensely to my growth as an artist.
An Engineer’s Approach
If you’ve checked out my bio, you’ve probably noticed that my college degrees are not in art-related subjects, but in mechanical engineering. I’ve always had an interest in how things work. More specifically, I’ve always been most interested in cars. I love cars. I remember at the age of 4 or 5, sending in a bunch of cereal box tops for a Hot Wheels Porsche 959. I still have that car and it sits on a shelf in my home studio as a reminder of the origins of my passion for automobiles.
As you might have guessed, I decided on studying mechanical engineering because I wanted to design cars. While I certainly took my share of automotive-related courses, including research in autonomous ground vehicles, my career path took me in a slightly different direction. So, while I don’t design cars for a living, I continue my love for automobiles in my artwork. I like to think of cars as functional sculptures, capable of conveying visual, audible, and experiential beauty. I think that makes them perfect subjects for the visual arts.
During college, I drew cars in marker as a hobby and to fulfill my creative needs. At the time, I applied an engineering approach to my drawings, plotting out line drawings with accurate perspective and filling in every detail with precision. This practice gave me a good appreciation of perspective and proportion, while simultaneously studying color, light, and reflection. Over time, my drawings improved in quality. I was still drawing cars up until just a few years ago.
A few of the cars I drew during college. From left to right:
Aston Martin Vanquish drawn on regular old 8.5” x 11” printer paper.
Ford GT drawn on Bristol Vellum. This is what I consider the first of my more serious car drawings.
Saab 900 drawn on Bristol Vellum as part of a commission. I guess this and the other two accompanying pieces were technically my first art sales.
Ford Cobra concept drawn on Bristol Vellum. This was a gift to my dad.
Branching Out
After college, I expanded my artwork into new subjects and artistic media. The pen and marker drawings gave way to charcoal, chalk, oil pastels, colored pencil, and painting (more on that later). In addition to cars, I developed a love for landscapes and seascapes. Nautical scenes are especially interesting to me, as I find the reflections in the water add dynamic and complex patterns that are unique to those scenes.
As I tried out each new artistic medium, I developed a better understanding for how each could be applied to the paper or canvas. Each has its own innate rules, depending on the material being applied. Some can be layered, others can’t. Some can be erased, others will just smudge. Some can be mixed, others not so much. Over a decade of experimentation has significantly improved my artistic capabilities, enabling me to transfer my skills more easily to new media and subjects. Of course, I was still drawing the occasional car now and then.
Some examples of various artistic media I’ve explored. From left to right:
Barn drawn with charcoal on Bristol Vellum. This barn was on the ranch where my dad grew up and I gave this drawing to him as a present.
Charcoal drawing of the Old Port in Portland, ME. This one is currently hanging up in my parents’ house, which isn’t far from Portland.
Oil pastel drawing of the old Baltimore tugboat on Bristol Vellum.
Watercolor painting of Fells Point in Baltimore, MD.
Discovery of Painting
Around 2014 I decided to give acrylic painting a try. My first subject was a landscape of Montana farmland, looking toward the Beartooth mountains from the perspective of the ranch where my dad grew up. I had no clue what I was doing, but the painting turned out alright. I enjoyed the process and was motivated by the result. Around this time I also experimented with watercolor, producing several paintings in the process. Subjects included crabs, sailboats, city scenes, even a few experiments with acrylic abstracts.
After a few years exploring acrylics, I felt confident enough in my skills to give oil paints a try. I was a little intimidated by oils, based on what I had read about their drying time and workability. I was accustomed to layering paints with acrylics, given their relatively short drying time, and wondered if I was going to get the hang of oils. Turns out, my first oil painting (a small 12” x 9” scene of some lobster boats) ended up looking pretty decent. I found that I ended up loving the fact that oil paints took longer to dry, giving me more time to blend colors and think about the composition as I worked. I even found methods of thinning oil paints to modify drying times and allow for layering multiple times in a single session. From that point on, all of my paintings have been done with oils.
My early exploration into painting. From left to right:
My first acrylic painting. A view of the Beartooth Mountains from Red Lodge, MT on a 30” x 24” canvas.
Watercolor painting of a sailboat on 11” x 14” watercolor paper.
An abstract acrylic painting on 30” x 24” canvas.
My first oil painting of some lobster boats docked in Portland, ME. This one was painted on a 12” x 9” canvas.
My Love for Impressionism
As I gained an appreciation for classic artwork, I developed a love for impressionism. Over the years of drawing cars with increasing precision and realism, I came to the conclusion that, while the end products look good, it’s very difficult to develop a unique style when creating realistic artwork. Yes, realistic pieces take a lot of skill to pull off well. But, especially when cars are the subject, what’s to tell a viewer that one realistic car drawing is done by one artist and another one is done by another artist (other than the signature, of course)? Sure, there might be certain styling cues that differentiate one realistic piece from another, but when scaling increasing levels of realism, all of these artworks will look more and more like a photograph.
Now, I’m certainly not taking anything away from those who create realistic artwork. I constantly find myself in awe looking at a painting or drawing that is so realistic that it might as well be a photograph. That level of skill blows me away. But, I felt like I needed some more personal style in my artwork. One day I hope that others can tell that a painting is mine by merely looking at the brush strokes and the color palette. To me, impressionism provides the freedom to inject a personal touch into a painting.
So, for the past few years I’ve been working toward the goal of improving my impressionist style in my paintings. As an engineer, it has been a challenge to shift from precise and exact brushwork toward the point of “coloring outside of the lines”. I have to challenge myself to use looser brush strokes and omit details that my engineer’s brain desperately wants to include. Sometimes along the way I’ve gone too far and gotten too loose with my brushwork. As I refine my painting style, I continue to experiment with brush techniques and have been doing more research on impressionist techniques. A recent purchase, Painting Like the Impressionists by Bruce Yardley, has been a very helpful reference. At this point in my artistic journey, I’m finding that painting in the impressionism style is becoming my ultimate challenge. It could be something I could work to perfect for the rest of my life.
Some examples of my attempts at impressionism paintings. From left to right:
Oil painting of a red tractor on the ranch in Montana where my dad grew up.
Posche 911 GT3R race car painted in oils on 12” x 16” canvas.
An oil painting of Tuscany I did for my friend’s restaurant, Salt & Vine, in Olney, MD.
A small oil painting study I did of Ayrton Senna driving the 1988 McLaren MP4/4. I think this is a good example where I got a little too loose with my brush work.
Settling in
So where am I now? Have I solidified my style? Absolutely not. It’s still evolving and getting better with each new artwork I create. I am seeing some more consistency in my more recent paintings, but I’m not quite sure if those areas of consistency are where I’d like my painting style to go, ultimately. I do know that the impressionist style is what I prefer most, giving me the freedom of my own interpretive approach while maintaining enough detail to resolve the actual subject of the painting. If you continue to follow me in my artistic journey, you’re sure to witness my painting style continue to change with each new painting. I’m excited to see how my style evolves over time and I hope you’re excited to follow along.
