My interest in art has been a constant for me. Ever since I was very small, I loved drawing and admired my mom's artwork. From around the age of nine, my #1 goal was to go to the Columbus College of Art and Design after high school. Although I never made it there, I gained experience elsewhere that was even more valuable to me.
The 1980's
My first "big moment", I think, came on October 29, 1985, when my friend John Biggs and I decided to start a comic book company. We were in our 5th grade class with a substitute teacher who must not have been paying much attention to us, considering we were able to form this small company (I suppose you'd call it a really small version of a Limited Liability Corporation nowadays) in the middle of the afternoon. We had each done our own comics the year before, and were, in a sense, competing against each other. I started a comic called "Superbug", and soon after John began a rag called "The Bananaland Times". Superbug was basically your normal, everyday walking, talking bug that gets zapped by aliens and gains superpowers. Crudely drawn, containing misspelled words left and right, this was a classic for all ages. You can check out the full, original issue to the right.
Okay, I don't think I sold a single copy. John's idea was quite a bit more original. He used some old classic-looking (and almost certainly copyrighted) cartoons from some of his dad's magazines and wrote his own captions to them. It was more of a variety magazine than anything else. Both were short-lived, but we had each seen the promise this kind of thing could have.
So, in October of '85, we decided to team up and each create our own comics under own brand name. At first, under his insistance, we called ourselves R.J. Comics (Richie and John Comics, get it?). That day, I began work on "SuperBunny", a bunny who gets hit by lightning and instead of turning into a charred piece of meat is instilled with superpowers. John started "The Super Guys", about a dog and a bean (yes, a bean) who go through pretty much the same thing. At the time the original "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was all the rage, and I think that's about all we had to go on for inspiration (this was before they got turned into mind-numbingly idiotic pizza-eating spoogehounds). So we drew. And drew. And drew some more. You can see a couple incarnations of the early stuff I was doing. Was it more mature, more appealing than "Superbug" had been? I'm not so sure. Ah, but my breakthrough......the one that catapulted me into fame and fortune beyond my wildest dreams came in early 1986 with......
Another mutant turtle ripoff.
But this would end up being the best comic book series I ever did. I began drawing it on April 2, 1986, and couldn't think of a name. John would later say they looked like giant marshmallows, but that thought hadn't crossed my mind at this point. My sister Kelli actually came up with the name "Slimebusters", and I loved it.  You can read the issue here, and I'm still perplexed as to why I decided to color the ORIGINAL copies instead of waiting for the copies. I spent a lot of time on the coloring, though, and was darn proud of it. During the time we were making these comics, my mom was actually doing the copying for us. At some point, she required me to get good grades in order to get a certain number of copies. Better grades, more copies. Tyrant. When I brought copies of the premiere issue of "The Slimebusters" to school, it was an instant hit. I had a couple people give me actual COINS......money, that is. I was selling my art. It was tons of fun. These superheroes were actually from another planet, hadn't been mutated at all. Truly an original concept. In fact, I sent this to Marvel Comics with a cover letter asking if they would review it for possible publication. They were decent enough to reply to me out of pure pity in the form of a rejection letter. I ended up doing two more issues, then it faded away until the fall of 1987, when John and I began a revival, of sorts. We hadn't done much the previous year, and wanted to get back into the creative process. In fact, we had "broken up" late in 5th grade when he kept accusing me of copying his ideas. Truth be told, I always envied his style and did try to use it in some of my creations. During this time, we changed our name to J.R. Comics. Luckily, we got past all the strife and started fresh in 7th grade.
I can't remember anything that he did at all during this period. He had started "The Kung-Fu Canines" in '86, which was very popular, and had enlisted the help of a strange cat named Eric Johnston to do his lettering.  He even went so far as to change our name to J.R.E. Comics for a short while, which I wasn't too happy with. He ended up not saving very much of his stuff, where I've saved everything down to little Father's Day notes I wrote when I was 6. I more or less worked exclusively on the new "Slimebusters" series off and on up until early 1989. My style matured a lot, and I was drawing a lot better in general. To the left is the cover of issue #9, which was started in April of '89 but never completed. I was always getting new ideas for things though, and still have notebooks full of material that never.....well, materialized. Everything from Garbage Pail Kids ripoffs to crossword puzzle books, I don't think there was any genre I didn't touch. I only took formal art lessons a couple times, once with John in 1987, when we developed some crazy-ass public service comic starring an aardvark......or anteater. Whatever. It's probably a good thing I lost THAT one. But I developed my own style of drawing and handwriting that I still use today. The end of 8th grade pretty much ended J.R. Comics' reign as comic book kings. We weren't nearly done collaborating though. You can read about our further adventures here. For a much more through history and to read all of our old comics, you can go here.
The 1990's
In the fall of 1989, I began high school at Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center. It was an alternative school that offered half-day programs to the juniors and seniors such as dance, acting, singing, and art. 
 I was still entranced with visions of going to C.C.A.D., and had my sights set on the Commercial Art program that Fort Hayes offered. In the meantime, I kept scrawling all my ideas in notebooks, always thinking of new ideas for comic books. By the 10th grade though, I had finally begun drawing portraits, and really trying hard to make things look realistic. These two images of Kelli and I were done in late 1990, and were my first real attempts at realistic portrait art. In order to get into the Commercial Art program, I had to take my "portfolio" and interview with the teachers. I got in, which surprised me to some extent, until I started and saw that my talent level was on a higher level than most of the others. I had a lot to learn, however, and spent my junior year doing a lot of experimentation. Senior year was when I really started to understand shading, lighting, and technique. Some of my better work from that year is in the Gallery, along with the few works I've done since graduation.
By the time I grauduated high school, I was into advertising. I applied for C.C.A.D., and for some reason was rejected, even though some of my peers with lesser talents were getting in. I applied at a few other places, and was accepted into the School of Advertising Art in Kettering, OH. They had a 2-year program specifically for graphic design. I got my student loan, all my art supplies, and moved a few days after graduation. I only attended for a few months, but gained a lot of good knowledge and did some pretty cool things. After I moved back to Columbus, I only did a few more pieces of art before family life pulled me away from my creativity. Of course, that part of my life was more rewarding in many ways, but my artistic talents were sitting dormant for quite a while. I did a portrait of my son in 1996, which was the last thing I would do for a long while.
The 2000's
I didn't do another serious piece until 2001, when I dusted off the supplies and rendered both kids. I used that one as a Christmas present for family members that year. I'm still working on a few smaller projects, but my music has dominated my creative life for the last couple years.
It was interesting to see that my talents hadn't diminished at all in the five years between projects. I find I can still pick up a colored pencil and create something just as nice as when I was doing it every day. That's why I want to share that with others, and make my services available to anyone who wants a nice piece of artwork hanging in their home.
The best part about having kids is seeing parts of you in them. In my daughter, Katie, I'm beginning to see a natural artistic talent that may be even better than mine was.  Last year, she did her first comic book. She created it immediately after I showed the kids my first Superbug comics. She made hers about Superbug, and I still have it because I hope it's the start of something big for her. But just recently, during the first week of May 2003, she created another comic book, this time supplying her own characters and storyline. And it's GOOD. Seven pages, a lot of dialogue, and even a teaser for issue #2 at the end. Comparing it to my first Superbug, I have to say it's on the same level artistically, but she puts much more detail into hers than I ever did. She did this as an 8 year-old, where I was starting mine at ages 10 and 11. Who knows where she'll go with this? With any luck, we'll soon be seeing a new revival of "The Slimebusters", courtesy of Katie Barr.
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