I Made 25 Tribute Illustrations Of Those We Lost In 2022

Some of the major influences in my life include my high school art teacher - Mrs. Timmer - she taught me so much and always encouraged my "artistic license". My college art teacher - Mr. Lynch - he introduced me to so many amazing artists and movies that started to shape my artwork. It might not look like it, but my two favorite artists are Basquit and Paul Klee. 

I do tribute portraits for a living. I get requests and commissions daily from people who have lost loved ones and want a unique illustration to pay tribute to them. I do tributes to mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. Brothers, sisters, best friends and sadly lost children. Pet tribute portraits are also a very common request as losing a pet is like losing a best friend and family member. After doing those all day, if someone in the public eye passes away, I do my best to pay tribute to them as well - making the tributes warm and happy and peaceful - which seems to really help people remember how incredible these people were and how much they meant to us as a society.

My wife always says: "I don't know how you never get tired or never run out of ideas" - I basically do artwork from sun-up to sun-down and have since I was a little kid. I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not creating art.

I'm extremely lucky to have a very positive community of people who follow my work. With so much ugliness and negativity spewed in our faces all day every day on TV, online and within social media - I only want to make people smile and forget about all of that for a few minutes. It's very rare for me to get a negative comment - (it happens, but I just ignore them) so I feel very fortunate to get to do this for a living.

I've been drawing since I can remember - my first love was the pencil. I did pencil illustrations until I went to college where I learned Photoshop and eventually Procreate. I do also really enjoy watercolor, although I rarely paint anymore.

What motivates me the most is simply creating something that can put a smile on someone's face. Doing tribute portraits comes with a lot of extremely sad and heartbreaking stories and they come to me to heal - even if just a little bit - and if I'm successful at my task, and I receive a nice message, it makes it all worth it.

When it comes to the finished product. I generally can picture what I'd like to accomplish in my head before I start, so to see the work in it's final form is what I enjoy the most - the process is fun, but the result is better.