Hi! My name is Andy, I am from Indianapolis Indiana. I am 26, married, and have 2 little girls . I am a former United States Marine. I joined when I was 18 and have deployed several times. I don't say that for recognition, I am proud of what I did, however I lost my career in 2011 due to an injury i sustained while on Active duty. After my stint of depression and figuring out what I was going to do with my life (unemployed and not able to stay in the career and only thing I know) I picked up some paint brushes, acrylics, and canvas at Hobby Lobby and began slinging paint everywhere. I came up with a few paintings that I think look well, but they were some of the first few I have done.

Tree in a Field at Sunset


Mountain Lake Scene


Close up of Mountains


I still do acrylic paintings and even dabble with oils. I enjoy them for landscapes and such, however my art is lacking in many aspects of composition and basic fundamentals. However it is my art and I enjoy it. I hope to make it better.



I used to be a big Starcraft 2 Gamer. I played more than I should have and started streaming every game I was on. So I dabbled in U/I creation so it made my stream nice and pretty. I started doing them for the community and my works are still being used by some professional and semi professional gamers. They are not super awesome but the customer was/is still happy. I am actually working on one currently that blows anything I have done in the past out of the water. Here is one of my old one's I used



I was making them before I got out of the military but painting was after. I'll throw a timeline of "art" at the end of this post.

Since I picked up painting, I decided to try my hand at digital painting. I got a copy of Photoshop Elements and a Wacom Bamboo Capture. I came up with some interesting stuff but its very amaturish. I redid some of the overlays to add in stuff i learned off youtube and other websites and it made them look a lot better. So I began doing some more Graphic Design natured products such as overlays and logo's. I dabbled some with web design but i cannot code so i just made images for people to use. I have done that for about the last 2 months. During that time I started watching every video made by Feng Zhu.... That man is amazing at his works. I thought I would give it a shot. I tried to design some spaceships, creatures, and landscapes. Needless to say I think they are horrible, but i am comparing myself to one of, if not, the best in the industry, and I have only been doing this for several months. Even my shrink says i'm too harsh on myself, but to me that is the only way to improve. However watching Feng's video's I picked up on things that i do wrong, or way's to better my works. It has definatly been evident. Here are some of the more recent projects I have done.

Head of a masked figure... This one I am not happy with... It looks too flat. I like the direction, but not the application.


I took the Masked Figure and added a hoot and some other things to make it look more like a head. I actually like this one


Title Bar for Twitch.tv


Logo for a Call of Duty Competitive Clan... I hate the logo but its what he had drawn out. I just expanded on his idea.


Messing around with a Logo for me



Thats really about all I want to show off lol. I stream everytime I do graphics and a link can be found at the bottom of this post. I am having fun with this and want to turn this into my new career. If i'm not playing with my kids or hanging out with my wife, or getting tattoo's i'm streaming graphics.

I am all self taught. Either books or websites. No art experiance since 2010.

Timeline:
July 2011 Starting making bad overlays for Starcraft 2
Aug 2011 Released from Active Duty
Oct 2012 painted first acrylic painting
Dec 2012 Got Wacom Tablet

My goal is to do something creative in entertainment and gaming. What exactly i'm not sure as i'm really new I just know the field!

Thanks for reading I look forward to making some new forum friends and learning as much as I can.

Contact:
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @SerafeimSC_GDS
Stream: www.Justin.TV/Serafeimgds

Serafeim is a Greek word for 'burning one' or 'serpent' not to be confused with serafim which is a hierarchy of angel

Happy Drawing and Painting!
Andy