Teefury

Words from jimiyo: Back in the 80's D&D became really popular. Parents back then became very frightened of what we now call "Imagination." They fell prey to television movies that portrayed kids who played D&D as mentally ill and in general having bad body odor. I lived through it. I bought my first D&D beginners set with my own lunch money, and since, I've loved dragons. It's all I drew for several years along with, secretly at the time, horribly rendered nude women. (It's fine art, Im not a pervert!) Anyways, back to the shirt. Dragons, despite the underlying stigma of nerdiness, are still radically awesome. I'd be proud to wear one. It's cool to be nerdy and eclectic. Next week, wolf shirts.

Tell us about yourself and your art: I've been interested in artwork since I was young and I have always been inspired by the monsters, creatures and robots of the toys and cartoons of my youth in the 80's- Transformers, TMNT, Thundercats, Godzilla, Voltron, and the like. I've been into ink drawings, acrylic paintings and sculpture for most of my life. For the past 10 years or so I have gotten into the realm of digital artwork and Photoshop is my favorite. I usually either sketch a rough drawing on scratch paper, scan it in and paint it in photoshop, or sometimes I just sketch directly into photoshop. I use a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet.

What's a day in the life of Tara Potts like? During the workweek, I drag myself out of bed and head off to the footwear company I work at to digitally color and render flip flops and fluffy slippers all the live long day. Upon returning home I try to erase those memories by drawing and painting lots of beasties with horns, claws, scales, spikes, fangs and what have you. I occasionally like to get some gaming in on my PS2, and I enjoy nature photography as a side hobby on the weekends sometimes.

Where would you like to see yourself in 5 years with your art career or other? I'd like to be doing some sort of illustration job with some conceptual work. I think designing characters and elements for video games would be a fun job, but really any sort of design job where I can be creative and have some variety in my work would be fantastic.

Any advice for aspiring artists? On the employment end- try to learn as much about digital artwork, layout and web design programs as you can. Not only will it keep a paycheck coming in, it will help you in your own artwork as well. When I started college I had no idea this technology would become this big a part of my life- now I use it everyday. For personal art pursuits- never let the passion die. There are many people who only create artwork if it's part of their job. Unfortunately when you work full time it's easy for all your time to devoured by the job, but when you are an artist I think it's important that some of your talents remain yours to enjoy.

Any shout outs? To my mother for always supporting me in all my artistic endeavors.