Impressive Digital Drawings by Wazowski – with Interview

A: Hello! My name is Henk, but I guess most people from PXL know me as wazowski, my member nickname. I’m 34 years old, born and raised in the Netherlands. Grew up in a farm, with enough space to daydream. Therefore it’s maybe a bit weird that nowadays I live in Buenos Aires, kind of the opposite of my childhood. It’s a new experience and so far I’m doing ok. Drawing and checking drawings was always something I liked, since I was a kid. Donald Duck was my hero, read his stories and drew him pretty many times. Although my interests are more widespread nowadays, I still can’t get enough of him.

Computers never really got my attention when I was younger. Sure it was fun to play a game and hey, you could even make drawings with it! But not for me. I thought that nothing could beat a real handmade drawing with emotions, something that a cold computer never could achieve. A pc was good for typing documents and that’s it! It took a while before I admitted I was wrong…

It was for my study Illustration Design that I really got in touch with a computer (yeah, a Mac) and graphical programs, and found out what great things you actually could do with them. Especially Photoshop was a mindopener. It still took some more years before I actually made a digital illustration and even then it wasn’t something all drawn in photoshop, but scanned illustrations and photos that I combined together. But yeah, I realized that the development of digital illustrations was something I couldn’t deny. On the contrary, it made and makes designing even a whole lot more of fun!

A: Inspiration for my work comes from everywhere. So yeah, you can call it imagination, but that’s always influenced by what you see around. The news, movies, comics, things from my daily life, it can be anything. Although I do tend to lean a bit to the Dark Side… What I like is to give a twist to a generally known subject, to make fun of cliches. Humor is quite important for me, to relativate things.

A: Photoshop is the program I use most, really great stuff you can do with it. But no matter how awesome it is, the thing I really can’t miss is my Wacom drawing tablet. Without that I doubt I’d have so much fun and interest in digital programs (although I do know people who can make great things with a mouse). In the end Photoshop is also just another (jawdropping) program, it’s you as user how to deal with it. And I do that best with a pen.

A: The most precious “thing” for me sounds like a cliche answer, but that would be my son. He’s almost 2 years now, can be very time-demanding, but most of all he’s very funny and a great kid.

A: A tip for digital design starters…. Well, first of all, work with good equipment (as said before, that’s a Wacom for me). Also, be interested and always look how things work. Check other people’s designs or tutorials to see how they dealt with certain difficulties. Not to copy what they made, but to understand why they took these decisions. And for the rest, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Something went wrong? Don’t worry, with digital drawing you can always change it. Experiment with what’s possible, don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t turn the way you’d like to, but learn from the experience and most of all have fun with what you create. Good luck!