About.....

I've always loved the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genre. Because the past 2 decades have been a flood of commission work as been my primary source of income, I've broadened my repertoire to include children's book illustrations, 3D modeling, architectural visualizations, advertising campaigns, and even unique projects like designing solar-lit monument signs. From vehicle wraps to wallpaper murals, portraits to patent art, I embrace every creative opportunity that comes my way. If I didn't know how to do it, I taught myself on the spot.

After 20 years of working online with all my various clients with varynig needs and from various parts of the world, I've developed a pretty smooth workflow that allows for easier changes, at any point in the creative process, by using layers and using the best properties of every piece of software I have. I even use spreadsheets to log my start and stop times along with what was accomplished during that work session, for complete transparency, which I provide with each update. I work by email so all instructions are right in front of me and I can go back to them for reference, rather than relying on memory from a phone call.

This workflow saves a lot of time, and allows me to keep my fees lower than most.

While I've honed my skills using platforms like Photoshop, 3Ds Max, Zbrush, and Vue, my recent endeavors have gravitated towards open-source software. This shift is grounded in principle; I believe that quality software shouldn't be a luxury inaccessible to many budding artists due to exorbitant pricing.

The last half-decade has seen open-source tools like Blender, GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape make remarkable strides. This evolution is a testament to passionate open-source software engineers whose motivations transcend mere profit, ensuring that all artists, irrespective of their financial standing, can pursue their passion without constraints.

In solidarity with the open-source movement and as a stance against overpriced proprietary software, I've committed myself to exclusively using open-source platforms. I ardently urge newcomers in the digital art realm to embrace these invaluable resources and harness their potential.

I also urge artists, especially as they become more financially stable through their careers, to back individual software developers crafting add-ons and plug-ins for open-source platforms. It's crucial to support those who offer their tools at a reasonable price when looking for advanced features beyond the standard offerings of these applications.

Remember - Open Source is a Community

Since I was a teenager I was eating organic food and admired the primitive housing construction of tribes in other countries .. adobe huts, thatch roofs, igloos, treehouses, bamboo homes. When I was 19 I heard about Michael Reynolds' Earthship design and Mike Ohler's $50 and Up Underground House books and became obsessed with using physical laws of nature to build, heat and cool my home. Since the internet I've expanded my obsessions by following Permaculture and attenting workshops at the Mother Earth News Fairs.

Currently my partner Andrea and I live in a 100+ year old farmhouse on 2 acres 20 minutes from smaller towns in southern Ohio, where we harvest rainwater from our roof for our many organic gardens, grow lots of our own food. We're both vegan. Andrea gathers as many different kinds of plants as she can and we plant them all over the property. Some we've rescued from dumpsters, some were cuttings we snagged by the side of the road, some we bought, some we found on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.

We also have 11.75 acres of mostly wooded land with a creek through it that we plan to build a partially underground house and go off grid. When I finish the design I'll post it here. We have a Facebook Page we call Soulstice Homestead that describes most of what we're doing in the permaculture space. We also have a blog called Dale and Andrea's Starving Artist's Food Forest that's a bit out of date as we've made a change of plans after we bought the farmhouse. So the design shown was an older one. We'll likely open up the new website, soulsticehomestead.com, once I set up the pages. If you follow out FB page you'll be able to keep up with our progress.

We keep 2 goats (Petunia and Chella), a rooster and a hen (Mr and Mrs Chook), all of which help create wonderful compost for our gardens, 12 14 cats - mostly rescues, a starling (BirdWirdicus), rescued from a busy city street in Columbus as a baby. People say you shouldn't save starlings because they're invasive. So are humans.

As for the indiginous critters in my yard, we've seen chipmunks, squirrels (rarely for some reason), deer, raccoons, possums, least weasels, moles, various species of mice, foxes, neighborhood and ferral cats, pileated woodpeckers, flickers, downey woodpeckers, grackles, starlings, sparrows, wrens, chickadees, cardinals, bluejays, mourning doves, goldfinches, baltimore orioles, mockingbirds, barred owls, a bald eagle flew over, herons fly by, turkey vultures, black vultures, garter snakes, a solitary sandpiper, red wing blackbirds.

It's started!
but I didn't like the flow, so I'm re-starting it.
There'll be something to gawk at soon.

Here's a sample of the style of illustrating I'll be using in my webcomics.