You have a really definitive style, and it holds very strongly throughout your portfolio; how did you come to like photorealism/retro, and were there other styles you preferred before finding this one?
Pretty much always this style. When I was younger, I modeled a lot of my paintings after Baroque art because that’s what I was studying, so if you go back a few years, you’ll see a bunch of art that looks like sepia toned Dutch Renaissance art…
But what that turned into started way way back. When I was a kid I had three main influences…
Album covers designed by Hipgnosis from my dad’s record collection:
Also, the art of Michael Whelan, whose art books were at my local library, and I’d always check them out:
And a magazine we had around the house called Step-by-Step Graphics, which was full of how-to guides for illustrating:
So my biggest influences have been 80s illustrators and 80s cover art—bold, realism, minimalistic compositions, and a soft, colorful, pinup-influenced airbrushed look.
You can see some more examples here.