About
The Artist
N. is a self-taught painter, illustrator, and digital artist pushing working at the boundaries of gay contemporary art.
Professionally, N. worked as a comic book artist in the '90s, before transitioning to storyboarding for animation on seminal series like Batman: The Animated Series, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, and Johnny Bravo.
After a long hiatus from art, a 2021 traumatic brain injury catapulted N. back into the world of visual creativity. At first drawing was a form of rehabilitation. Now, it is as an exploration of queer art subject matter, and what he has found to be a radically altered pop art style. Now N.'s art explores the homoerotic elements of gay, kink, and fetish culture; all with an eye on the comical practicalities of real life.
Summary
The pieces you are viewing are all hand drawn and painted original digital art. To achieve the pieces I apply traditional sketching, charcoal, inking, and oil painting techniques using an app that frustratingly simulates these media.
Process
Each piece goes through the following steps:
Idea - the glimpse of a scene, a fleeting moment of fantasy, or a concept I want to convey.
Thumbnails - tiny loose sketches to work out a composition, figures, gestures, and the scene, calling back to my animation days 30 years ago.
Rough Sketch - I photograph and enlarge the thumbnail then create a rough sketch.
Photo Reference - If needed I’ll shoot reference photos on my own using friends as models. Less often, I’ll license reference from stock photo sites, though generally they don’t cover this subject matter.
Often I skip this step, since my brain injury my visual memory got rewired, and some images just stick.
Refined Sketch - a near fully worked out sketch like Three Alone, or Morning Coffee.
Colour Studies - 5 or 6 loose paintings to work out the colors and values of the piece. My post injury/rewired brain loves colours.
Painting/Illustration - I often mix these two together. This process can take weeks, sometimes months. You don’t get photo like results without some sweat. As you get closer to painted pieces like Couple 2 - Tender, or Baths 1 - Triptych the more abstract they become as you see the brush strokes.
Printing - where the digital transitions to physical. I spend hours with sample papers and printer settings to get the best realization of the digital piece. The quest for control moved printing “in house”, who needs living space?
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