About William, his media and and techniques.
This page covers illustration, both conventional and Fantasy/SF, Portraiture, 3-D (sculpture), cartooning and writing.
William has always had a fascination with people's faces. In the various jobs he has worked at over the years, he has taken spare moments to sketch his co-workers, either as realistic or stylized representations. He studied under Chuck Wilkinson, Harry Borgman and Gordon McGowan at College for Creative Studies back when it was called Arts and Crafts. In addition he has also taken oil portrait painting from Joseph Maniscalco and figure painting from Grace Serra, both at Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center. He works primarily in Alkyd paints, oil pastel or charcoal.
William as an Artist/Painter/Illustrator
William's first job out of high school was in the mat room of a commercial art studio in downtown Detroit. This experience convinced him that he should attend what is now called College for Creative Studies, which he did full time for four years. His focus has expanded some over time, but he has always come back to figurative work. His focus is on creating images that blur the line between fine art and illustration. Paintings that may also function as editorial and book cover illustrations are included in his repetoir.
His current medium of preference is alkyds, a fast drying, oil-like paint that can be readily mixed with oils. Alkyds have the advantage over acrylics in their easy blending, and the advantage over oils in their fast drying. Often glazes can be applied over underpainting the same day. Stand oil or other mediums can be mixed for extending the drying time.
William's Science Fiction and Fantasy work
William started reading SF and Fantasy in high school with the novels of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. He realized early on that Science Fiction was a literature of cultural/social and/or technological ideas , often extrapolating what the future might be like based on current cultural or technological trends, or exploring different views of controversial, volatile subjects, in the process making the exploration more objective by "removing" it from its immediate context. When your brother or sister is involved, it will have a different emotional resonance than if it only involves a fictional character and some alien on a distant planet.
William feels that Fantasy, on the other hand, is an exploration of the human psyche - from the archetypes of mythology and folk tales (and even recent fiction, whether novels or movies) as they reflect the internal, often subconscious needs of the human race - to the almost endless permutations of inter-personal relationships, again in a context removed from potentially highly charged emotions.
Williams attraction to the genre as an artist is the opening of the venue for creating images that never were or might never be. Historically, the artist's job was to present an image of reality, whether a portrait of a noble or a "religious truth" exemplified by the paintings of the Sistine Chapel. Photography freed the artist from the requirements of slavishly portraying reality. The artist was then allowed, even encouraged to "interpret" reality according to his/her unique vision. Plus it's just plain fun.
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William studied figurative sculpture from Jay Holland at what is now kown as College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He recommends the study of sculpture as a discipline that will also help inform the vision of the painter/illustrator. Any understanding of how things exist in reality will help its portrayal in two dimensions.
William observes that the market for sculpture may be limited, but the personal creative rewards are at least as good as for drawing or painting. William has worked in clay, wax, bronze (casting his own pieces in a foundry), wood and more recently, Sculpey (TM). For commercial purposes, Sculpey seems to be the most practical, offering a standard flesh colored clay body, as well as an excellent palate of colors. They mix well with each other to achieve custom colors.
William has created this current website on a Power Mac G4 1.25. The software he used to create the contents includes: mostly Adobe Photoshop and some Adobe Illustrator. For assembling the different components, he used Dreamweaver MX.
William's Graphic Deisgn methods
Regardless of platform, though with a preference for the Mac, William works in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Quark Xpress.