About Me
My Background
My Inspiration
My Background
Hi. I’m Steve Temkin, a Chicago-area artist who’s been drawing and painting since I was old enough to hold a crayon or pencil. From an early age, I became fascinated with the way my favorite artists were able to capture realistic detail and lighting in representational art, and embarked on a lifelong self-taught journey to learn and use t
Hi. I’m Steve Temkin, a Chicago-area artist who’s been drawing and painting since I was old enough to hold a crayon or pencil. From an early age, I became fascinated with the way my favorite artists were able to capture realistic detail and lighting in representational art, and embarked on a lifelong self-taught journey to learn and use these methods. My career in advertising focused on layout and design and typography and photo manipulation, where digital tools grew in importance and ability... and soon were incorporating fine art possibilities I found intriguing and essential.
My Medium
My Inspiration
My Background
When it comes to traditional medium, I prefer graphite, charcoal, pastels, oil and acrylics and occasionally watercolors. Each offers their own challenges and advantages. But, as computers have become more powerful and programmers have become more clever, it has become possible to render images — from “scratch” or using photos as a refere
When it comes to traditional medium, I prefer graphite, charcoal, pastels, oil and acrylics and occasionally watercolors. Each offers their own challenges and advantages. But, as computers have become more powerful and programmers have become more clever, it has become possible to render images — from “scratch” or using photos as a reference or guide — that reduce many of the challenges and enhance the advantages of a medium, producing results that in most cases can be indistinguishable from a real media work, especially when printed professionally on canvas or fine art papers.... including the underlying texture, detail of brushstrokes, thickness or thinness of paint, and the layering and glazing apparent in fine art. See it in action here and here.
My Inspiration
My Inspiration
My Inspiration
No painter’s work fascinates me more than Vermeer. The realistic nature of his paintings has intrigued artists for generations... especially since his canvases show no sign of initial underlying sketches, and his rendering of perspective and texture and lighting is photographically perfect. His work was done in an age when art incorporate
No painter’s work fascinates me more than Vermeer. The realistic nature of his paintings has intrigued artists for generations... especially since his canvases show no sign of initial underlying sketches, and his rendering of perspective and texture and lighting is photographically perfect. His work was done in an age when art incorporated the latest high-tech optics including lenses and mirrors... and scholars and artists such as David Hockney posit that without these “tricks” including the use of the camera obscura, his work would have been impossible. (Screen the film “Tim’s Vermeer” for a fascinating look at this.)