Years ago a grandfather named Ralph, was pestered enough by a grandson named Kraal, to purchase the book ‘ how to draw comics the marvel way’. That book alone started the journey for a young boy who had once planned on being a writer. Many other art books were given to Kraal by his grandfather-- books on figure drawing, landscape paintining and sketching. Each book made Kraal want to learn every aspect of art. Kraal jumped from pencils to watercolors, from watercolors to oil paints, and from oil paints to airbrush. Then there was the computer. The computer was always in the background due to his brother’s interest in computer’s art and music abilities. Kraal’s brother stuck with the music and Kraal settled in on the art. Still with a desire to write Kraal focused on comic book art. After working on a title for a small comic book company his gears steered him towards graphic design and commercial art. Kraal worked for years as a production artist only to be frustrated with the lack of creativity in a lot of the client’s pieces. At that point kraal picked back up the airbrush and worked for a small studio, which he learned a lot about the industry and the business of self-promotion. The computer was still calling his name. The purchase of a Macintosh and a wacom tablet was the Rosetta stone Kraal was looking for. At that point kraal was not really impressed with the ‘look’ of computer art so he set out to create ways of making sure no one could tell his art was computer generated.

            Since that time Kraal has never looked back to the fumes of oil paint or the cleaning of an airbrush. Learning many software packages from vector to photo to 3D animation, he has never forgot the original books purchased by his Grandfather. The true art lessons in those books are what Kraal uses to create his illustrations. It just so happens that today it is done on computer. Tomorrow it may be a stick and parchment, we never know where creativity will leads us.