Interview with Nate Owens
Q. Hi could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background in CG and are you self taught or taken some training?
Personal things...
 My wife, Carol, our ten dogs and three cats live in beautiful rural South Carolina. I grew up on my grandparents’ farm and although I’ve lived in large cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta) I’ve always been a country boy at heart and prefer the serenity to the chaotic metropolis. The advent of computers capable of illustration and graphics and the Internet makes it possible to serve clients on a global basis from my home office.
Education...
‘Draw!’ they said
I did. On the backdrop for school plays in grammar school. On t-shirts for classmates. For the school paper. On the dash of a ’31 Chevy coup, for galleries, magazines, books, newspapers, greeting cards, TV spots, ads, bus benches...
I’m not convinced that anyone is ‘self-taught’ – teachers, parents, friends and people we admire influence us all.
In my case, it seems that my teachers saw something that I didn’t. My scribbles were no better than the other kids’ scribbles, yet they seemed determined to assign me to do drawings and other artistic projects. In high school I encountered an upper classmate who was doing unbelievable drawings and paintings – stuff like Frazetta and Wally Wood were doing – it wasn’t until later that I became familiar with the wonderful early artists of Mad Magazine fame (Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, and others).
Meeting that kid in high school was like someone pouring gas on the flame. (He signed his work Cosmo – not sure what became of him, but he was a major talent).
My first job was doing drafting and from there I moved into the printing business doing mostly production work (paste-up etc.) with occasional logos and illustrations. From there I moved into agency-type situations, working next to some very capable pros, and eventually graduating into art directing and later specializing in illustration and graphics. In those days it was doing layouts with markers, so the drawing skills played a part in producing comps for clients.
Other than a couple of years of art classes in high school, my education was in the work force, fueled by an immense compulsion to learn and survive.
About Computers & Graphics…
I entered the graphics business in the late 60’s as a production artist well before the arrival of computers that were capable of anything relating to graphics. Then, illustration was done with conventional media (airbrush, pen and ink, acrylics, oils, etc.). In the early ‘90s the computer was getting interesting as a tool for both design and illustration and gaining ground in the industry. I began using them and haven’t looked back since.
Q. Which software program(s) do you use for your CG and why?
The computers and the tools…
I’ve worked on PC and Mac for years and my personal computers have been pc’s due to their affordability and the lower cost of software and upgrades. Anyway that’s just personal preference.
For doing illustration work, I prefer Photoshop and Painter, and sometimes Adobe Illustrator. I tend to mix them up based on the project at hand. I’ve done some 3D technical illustration and info graphic work using Rhino, Hexagon and Carrara (budget programs, but they do the job, and I’m not doing complicated animation.) Lately I’ve been experimenting with a little program called Sculptris (recently acquired by Pixologic) for doing organic digital sculpting.
In some illustration projects, I do preliminary “models” in 3d software. This allows working out perspective and mechanical details much quicker. For instance, while doing an illustration for a greeting card I created a sleigh for Santa in Rhino, rotated and positioned it as needed into my painting as a reference. I did the same when I needed to draw a cutaway perspective view of the interior of a dining room and clubhouse, rendering all of the furniture, tables, chairs, etc in 3d software, positioning all the parts for correct perspective and scale and finished the illustration in a sketch style resembling pencil and flat monochromatic color.
The best way to get the idea is to visit my two websites. Pigments of My Imagination is for my paintings at www.nateowens.com, and the illustration & graphics work is at ArtPixel Studios – www.artpixelstudios.com
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