A handful of letters, intentionally chosen, shapes our identity. Given at an early age, it’s more than who we are. It’s who we will become. Our names outlive us in the memories of those that love and care for us. We name our children, our pets, the songs we sing, and the books we read. Even fictional characters are handed names.

As I wrote my first novel, Bag of Lies, I randomly pulled names wherever I could find them.  The hero, the villain, the soldier, the spy… They each got a name that suited them.  But one of my characters, a minor role at best, was renamed just before the book was published.
Major Tickner’s small, stout bulldog originally had a different name. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. I just decided, last minute, that I wanted a certain name in the book, a name that held a very special place in my heart.

I remember sitting in an empty parking lot, almost ten years ago, holding the miniature piebald dachshund in my lap. She was wiggly and cute like most puppies anxious to explore the world around her. We had originally picked her out for one of my wife’s coworkers, so they named her and took her home. But they picked out the silliest name, or at least I thought so at the time. Why would you name a dog after a type of cheese?

I would have never dreamed that the puppy would be returned to us a year later, but she was. I thought for sure we would find her another home, so I tried to not get too attached. But it didn’t take her long to wiggle her way into our family. She unexpectedly found her place in my heart.  
The year 2020 was a difficult year for us all. The world changed, and many of us experienced loss in one way or another. The world kept spinning, but it left an emptiness in our lives. For some the repercussions were minor, for others they were great.

It’s been almost a year now since we lost our little Colby. We still don’t know exactly what happened. She just suddenly got sick, and the vet couldn’t tell us why. We said our goodbyes on May 4, 2020. She wasn’t the small, stout bulldog described in my book, but she was a sweet dog and very precious to me. I miss her.

When I first started looking for a way to combine my love for photography and painting, I knew I wanted to do something that would set me apart as an artist. By the time my art career began to take off and I started winning awards, I had already invested years working on my photography. I knew I wanted to take my imagery to another level. I wanted to push the envelope.
As a photographer, I had already mastered Photoshop, so I was excited when I discovered Corel Painter. For those that aren’t familiar with it, Painter is software that imitates real world painting mechanics on a digital platform.  With the use of a pressure tablet, painter gives me the freedom to play with hundreds of art mediums without the mess of paint, ink, charcoal, or chalk pastels. For me, it bridges the digital and traditional art worlds together. Of course I had seen Photoshop filters that claimed to imitate a painting or a drawing, but I never found any of them that truly resembled the realistic earthy feel of an authentic painting.
Honestly, it has taken me more than five years to master my unique approach to a hybrid art that meets my personal standard and delivers a museum quality experience. The time consuming process enables subtle elements to unite into art that is truly unique and dynamic. I combine Photography and Digital Art using half a dozen software programs to create a digital under-painting that I print onto museum quality canvas. I stretch the canvas by hand across a wooden frame and prepare it for painting. Using acrylic paint I hand brush vibrant and sometimes darker colors into the composition. The contrast of the acrylic blends with the ink and produces a vibrancy that ink alone doesn’t. Acrylic gel hides the contrast between the ink and paint turning the composition into one seamless work of art. I personally do everything by hand, including my signature. So when it’s done, each piece is a one of a kind, hand painted, digital, acrylic painting. And although the development of each step took countless hours of experimentation, none of them makes my art what it has become.
Now that I have developed a recipe for creating my Hand Painted Digital Art, I am now focusing on the more important element of composition. How I create my work has taken a back seat to the imagery.
I’m no longer focused on how I do the things I do, but instead the why I do the things I do. Where am I taking you? What story do I want to tell? The answer is hidden in plain sight, deep within the colors shapes and patterns.  Follow me down the rabbit hole and maybe you’ll discover the wonderful world we never see.