jasonbeam

I am a former digital artist hailing from the early days of the medium - when the word 'Photoshopped' hadn't been coined yet and NFTs were 20 years away. In 1993, I was originally focused on being a traditional illustrator, but changed my direction in college to graphic design and learned the computer side of art. By 1995, I was creating all sorts of weird stuff using Photoshop and by 1998 had turned it into a recognizable style.

It was a great time for digital art because the field was quite small - it took experience and knowledge to run the expensive programs. I had to have photographic skills, as digital cameras hadn't been able to capture images in high resolution - so photographing models and taking the film to be processed was still a thing. Scanners were $1200 ($2400 in 2022 dollars), so not everyone had one. Wacom tablets had a drawing space the size of a 3x5 notecard back in those days, and you had to use your hand while staring at your monitor. Drag-and-drop website design hadn't been invented yet, so putting your artwork online required designing your own site. A few years later, places like DeviantArt showed up to help you put your artwork in front of a larger audience than you could get on your own.

I created artwork for a wide variety of book covers, magazines, movie posters, DVD packaging - mostly in the horror genre over the next 10 or 11 years, and then moved onto teaching graphic design at Great Falls College/MSU and being employed as an Art Director at an advertising agency until 2015 when I left with my wife to start a restaurant.

I'm lucky to have been around at the beginning - it's different now. "Photoshopping" or "Photo manipulation" are dirty words in the art world. The world-wide availability of apps and programs that do most of the work have made digital art a challenging field to be in when it comes to quantifying your creative abilities. Digital art has changed, especially with pens and tablets - allowing people to create more naturally. I am a digital dinosaur - harkening back from an age where you had to scan photographs, have sharp hand-eye coordination to use your mouse for precision work and figure out how to use Photoshop without layers (layers didn't come until version 3.0).

This Deviant page is my art portfolio. There's some pen-and-ink stuff new and old, digital art, mostly old - but I do get the chance to whip out a piece every now and again. After many years of constant working, I am really hoping to get back to some hand illustrating this winter. We'll see.

Jason Beam, October 2022