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Interview by Alejandro
Suarez
Digital
Artworks |
Welcome
to Digital Artworks Will , it is an honour to have you with
us.
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| Will |
My
pleasure; thank you very much for the invitation.
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Digital
Artworks |
Tell
us a little about yourself , where are you from? , do you make
a living with your Artwork? Do you have family?
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| Will |
I
live in Utah, US, but am not from here. It’s the job thing.
You want to work, you go where the work is. I’m originally
from Virginia, but travelled quite a bit as my father was in
the Navy. It was a great life growing up.
I do not yet make my living from art. I have a pretty
good day job as an air traffic controller, and with only 8
years to retirement, I’m unlikely to quit. I have received
enough work from my art to be excited about retiring from ATC
at the earliest opportunity.
I’ve been married for 19 years and have two children;
a girl 18, and a boy, 14.
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Digital
Artworks |
What
kind of hardware
and software do you use to create such a great images?
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| Will |
First,
thanks for the compliment. For hardware, I depend on an Athlon
XP 1800 with 1gb of ddr ram, geforce 3 ti200. And the best
19” monitor I could find. It was expensive, but when it’s
what you look at all the time, I wanted the best colors and
fastest refresh rate I could find. For me, it was the
Viewsonic p95f.
Like
most digital artists, I’ve tried just about every 3d and 2d
art program out there, but have settled down to using four-
Poser, Bryce, Painter and Photoshop. One of these days, when I
get more comfortable with drawing the figure, I’ll drop
Poser and Bryce. I still have Truespace on my computer, I
haven’t used it in so long, Windows XP reminded me there was
an unused shortcut on my desktop. Yeah, thanks Bill. Oh, and
Bill? Since you’re bound to find out sometime, I use two-ply
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Digital
Artworks |
Where
or how ,do you find the inspiration for your images?
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| Will |
Everywhere.
Things that pop in my head. Color. Motion. It may sound trite,
but life is incredible… even sitting on my back porch I look
at the grass and wonder how many shades of green there are…
and not just grees, but yellows and browns and blues. The
human figure is amazing; skin color is so dependent on the
surrounding light. It’s red one time, blue the next. I look
at the work of painters I admire. Why did they choose these
colors? Why this point of view? Why this composition?
Like anyone else, you look at enough great images and
think “I suck”. But I try to turn that around and instead
think “there’s always more to learn”. I remind myself
that no one else can see things the way I see them. We all
have our unique view to give. I think that thought alone is
inspiring.
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Digital
Artworks |
Who
is your favorite artist ?
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| Will |
Oh,
you can’t expect me to answer with just one, can you?
All my favorite artists are painters (except Rodin-
unbelievable sculpture); some from the 19th
century, like William Bougereau and John William Godward. Then
Maxfield Parrish. Some more recent painters like Frank
Frazetta and Jeffrey Jones. Ok, I’ll pick one. Frank
Frazetta. Sure, Boris is good. Royo is good. So are countless
other fantasy artists. And most might always be better than
me. But there’s only one Frazetta. Just about anyone could
paint a lion; but when you see Frazetta’s lion, you feel it
ready to pounce… see the muscles bulge and know that
something is about to happen. You feel gravity. Not to mention
he paints the most womanly women in art. Just my opinion, of
course. A ton of people can paint; he is da MAN.
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Digital
Artworks |
Do
you think that he/she,
some how have a little influence in your artwork ?
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| Will |
Without
a doubt. I think I have my own ways of seeing things; my own
way of interpreting a scene. We all do. But I have been highly
influenced by the colors of Parrish, the drama of Frazetta,
the mood of Jones, the clothwork painting of Bougereau, the
marbles of Alma-Tadema. Every artist has been inspired by
those they admire. You look at all the different ways of doing
things, find which ones ring true with yourself, and then
develop your own style. And style is not something you
“try” to do. It just happens. You paint enough pictures,
and it just happens.
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Digital
Artworks |
Im
sure many artist are familiar with the work and your site , Did
you build the site ?
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| Will |
Yes.
I’m not a rocket scientist when it comes to html, and I’m
not crazy about web work. I’d much rather be painting.
Rollover buttons are about as technical as I get. With my
site, I just went for simplicity. People come to see the art,
and I don’t want to get in their way. Show ‘em where it
is, and let ‘em get there without pop-ups, flashing lights
and weird fonts. I see way too many sites that are like “see
what I can do” sites. If you’re a designer, that’s ok.
But don’t make me move my mouse around waiting for it to
turn into a hand to figure out the links. Sorry, easy question
turned into a rant :)
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Digital
Artworks |
What
do you expect for the future as
a digital artist ?
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| Will |
Tough
question. I think the real question will be “what is art?”
Because the line between
renders, photo-manipulation, and painting is getting
blurred. Nothing you see printed is real. It’s all been
enhanced digitally. Is that art? I really love painting on the computer. But I also admire
traditional artists, because in the end, they can still point
to their brushes, oils, and canvas and say “I did it with
those”. Real, tangible things. They have the dirt on their
hands to prove it. Everyone should have a chunk of charcoal
they can smudge around to remember the feeling of getting
their hands into it. Create some art that requires soap for
cleanup.
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Digital
Artworks |
Which
one is your favorite image ?
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| Will |
I’ve
heard some artists say “I don’t have one” or “all of
them” or “my last one”. For me, most of the time,
it’s probably the one I’m working on. Today, it’s
the last one I did called “At
the End of the Day”. It’s all a question of “in
which picture did I succeed the best in getting the picture in
my head down to the sceen?” I have two like that: “La
Mer de la Naissance” and “Standing
Tall”. Just two of my images that I don’t
automatically think of something that needs to be fixed.
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Digital
Artworks |
One
last question Will, do you think that you have achieved what
you want to say in your images ?
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| Will |
Not
yet. If I had achieved it, I wouldn’t necessarily quit, but
I’d find another way to express things, like sculpture. With
2d art, there’s always an infinite number of ways to show a
scene, to light it… so many ways to express feelings using
point of view, form, and color. People have been painting
figures for a hundred thousand years, and there’s no one
image that you can point to and say, “that’s it, there’s
no more to say.” Art is so cool… take twenty painters,
have them do the same scene, and you get twenty different
interpretations. The viewer will take different feelings from
each one. We all have the ability to push or attract the
viewer’s eyes in so many ways. How are you going to do it?
Therein lies the fun.
It’s all about the intangible things that an image can
carry. Not just the lighting or color, but the feelings those
things create in the viewer. For instance, we’ve all seen
images of a woman walking along a beach. But what if you could
do it in a way that made the viewer smell the sea breeze and
feel their feet get damp? Now that would be something to
strive for as an artist, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’m out there,
but I think we have that power. I’ve seen images that do
that to me, and that’s when I know I’ve seen a successful
piece of art.
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Digital
Artworks |
Thank
you very much for granting us this interview.
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| Will |
It’s
been fun. Sorry for any ranting I might have put you through.
Like a lot of people, it’s a passion. Get going, can’t
stop, that kind of thing.
Can’t dance, might as well paint.
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