Senior Level Designers are very much sought after, and they are greatly admired in the design community. It’s a coveted status that not all achieve. These master are capable of not only producing amazing work, usually for high profile clients, but are able to do an amazing volume of work in a short period of time.

There is a reason Senior Designers make the big bucks, simply put they are worth it. What they are able to bring to a project, a team, and a company is of considerable value. They are often able to accomplish task in a fraction of the time of their counterparts and can give genuinely useful insight into the needs of a project. Today I will reveal a few of their coveted secrets.

Senior Designers Know Shortcuts and Use them.
One thing that becomes immediately obvious when watching a Senior Designer work is that they know the shortcuts for whatever program they are working in. They don’t usually have to second guess or fiddle with menus or panels to do simple or repetitive task, within a few clicks they have exactly what they wanted.

This is something that Art Directors and Creative Directors at Agencies have a tendency to see right away and it carriers more weight than you can imagine. Why is it so important? Time is the one commodity that can’t be replaced, and learning the keyboard shortcuts means you valued enough of your time to where saving even a few seconds is worth it to you. It tells them a lot about your maturity and experience.

Senior Designers Have Thousands of Assets.
Senior Designers usually have been working for years and in that time have likely accumulated a massive stockpile of photographs, brushes, fonts and other resources. This means that there is usually less time and expense for them to work on a project as they don’t have to do stock photo research outside their own library too often, and they have likely even created many of their resources from scratch.

Senior Designers Have Mastered Bridge and Acrobat.
Organizing your assets, tagging them, making them easy to find is extremely important. Bridge also has several useful tools like the ability to make PDF’s of your image assets for reference purposes or selecting images from a photo shoot in literally just a few clicks. This can also be used when you need to send out a series of material for someone to evaluate.  It is also vital to have mastery of Acrobat and the PDF format which is still today the most accepted format. Its a very universal format and Acrobat Reader is free, making the review process easier, and it is the format most printers expect to work with.

Senior Designers Use The Core Design Principles.
Senior Designers use and breath the Gestalt Uniforming Principles. When you look at their work there is sense of unity, focus, you can see the use of texture, proper application of contrast and color usage; they control your eye direction, there is obvious depth and they take advantage of texture in subtle ways. All this is done seamlessly and flawlessly in their work and it is what sets the bar for other designers.

Senior Designers Have Mastered the Adobe Design Trinity.
Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Senior Designers more often than not can tell you what more than 80% of the tools in each of the programs does and whether it would be appropriate to use it or not. That is what is meant by mastery of the application, not the result they are able to achieve with those tools.

A “one trick pony” could be could with the tools necessary for Vector Illustration, yet know nothing about how to bring that same artwork into Photoshop as a Smart Object and know how to polish it and take it even further. Beyond master the individual tools and software, Senior Designers know how to use the Design Trinity in combinations to get the best out of their work, and do task more efficiently and when to use what tools and software for the result they want.

Bonus:

Senior Designers Use Work-flows.
Having an established work-flow, or a standard for how you perform certain task every time is very important. Knowing exactly what you have to do, and how to do it cuts down the time things take and is the reason Senior Designers can produce 10 comps when other designers can only do 3 comps in the same amount of time.

Defining your own process or rituals for how you approach aspects of your projects is important because you won’t waste time floundering. Since you will always find yourself “prepared to work” you can focus on doing things rather than figuring out how to approach them. A primary example is having an established work flow for retouching your stock photos. Terry White has 5 things he does to every photograph he’s going to use.

I hope you have a much better insight into some of the things that Senior Designers have that separate them from everyone else. If you’re a Senior Designer reading this feel free to share any of your secrets or advice in the comments below! Everyone else can feel free to comment as well!

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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I’ve met a lot of amazing people through twitter, Designers, Artist, Social Media Guru’s and Web Masters. This week I’m going to share some of these amazing people with you in the tradition of Follow Friday!

@bkmacdaddy
One of my favorite people on twitter, bkmacdaddy is always provide useful tips, articles and inspiration, not only through his twitter account but through his amazing blog at bckmacdaddy.com as well.
http://twitter.com/bkmacdaddy

@JThompsondesign
A designer couldn’t ask for a better friend than Jarred Thompson. One of the creative minds behind Neuno, and also the man responsible for DesignJuices, Jarred is one of the most active people I’ve seen in the online design community.
http://twitter.com/JThompsondesign

@JoshuaFrankel
In addition to being a great guy Josh has a great eye for design and has attracted a fairly large following on twitter. His post are thoughtful and so are his responses to his followers, definitely someone you should watch.
http://twitter.com/JoshuaFrankel

Are there amazing people that you follow on Twitter? Why don’t you tell everyone about them by posting a comment?

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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As many of you know I’m a huge fan and supporter of Kyle Lambert, a young UK Digital Artist that I know will go far very fast. Kyle’s work is always nothing short of amazing, and its the only world I can use to describe his latest iPad Artwork for Toy Story 3.

I’m not the only one that was impressed, Kyle’s work actually ended up being featured on Pixar’s official blog!

U.K.-based visual artist Kyle Lambert usually creates sensational artwork using professional graphics tablets. But for his latest piece, he drew the Toy Story gang in the “New Toys!” scene from Toy Story 3 using Apple’s iPad. At first glance, I almost couldn’t believe this was done by hand, never mind on a touchscreen. -From The Pixar Blog

If you haven’t seen the video for how he accomplished this you are really missing out. It’s really great to see Kyle’s process and the details of his work like this, and I’m glad he takes the time to show it to us. You can read a full account from Kyle himself about this artwork on his website.

Direct Link: http://www.kylelambert.co.uk/ipad/toystory3/video.html

Kyle Lambert Toy Story 3 iPad Painting on Youtube

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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First introduce yourself for the readers who don’t know you!

Melody of SexiDesign.com

Why hello to all you sexy readers out there, my name is Melody Nieves (nee evv ess) and I’m originally from Long Island, NY. I am the flirty and eccentric author to two design and marketing sites, MelodyNieves.com–my personal blog, and SexiDesign, which covers the influence of sex in marketing and design. I consider myself an artist first and foremost, but it was when I joined a financial services company at 18 that I developed my second love for marketing.  I majored in architecture for a year in Philadelphia but moved onto opportunities with that company. From there I would experience really unpredictable and diverse experiences as a young business person.
What made you decide to be a designer and how did you get into this field?

[Forgive me for my long story LOL] Well I started learning about design back when I was 12 years old. There were early blog-like sites back then that teens designed with Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro that I had a fascination for. Since I was always into art I started to learn about web design, but lost computer access about 2 years after. It wouldn’t be until I got to college in 06 that I started messing with PS again. I’ve really just gotten back into design because of my diverse experiences from the last couple of years and decided in the past year that I would take a break and try to pursue life as a digital artist and design blogger.

Tell us about the blog “A Walk In My Shoes” and how that got started?

AWalkInMyShoes.com was the journey of my crazy business life as well as my advice with a real personal touch. Here’s how it really started: When I left college I landed an opportunity to work for a startup financial services company via a video resume I sent to its CEO. I would go on to work as a marketing trainee/coordinator/designer/everything you could possibly think of for that company. Because of my initial interest in the company’s investment products as well as my hard work, I moved on to create my own subsidiary company in partnership with my former boss. Incentivest, Inc. launched in early June 08′ when I was only 19 years old, in pursuit of “Financial Therapy.” AWIMS was originally my blog for Incentivest, in recognition of my “confessions as a young entrepreneur.” However, 6 months after it’s launch, I decided to dissolve Incentivest. I maintained AWIMS as a look into my journey, but now as a digital artist and marketing enthusiast. Most recently I’ve sold the domain for AWIMS, and transferred the site to my new domain of MelodyNieves.com.

You’ve mentioned that you are an entrepreneur, can you tell us about some the success you’ve had, and how you went about it?

I owned my first company at 18 (Incentivest, Inc.) as mentioned previously. Prior to that, my work led to little personal successes like having articles written about the company I worked for as well as my own. When I got into digital art, soon after I won a trip to the Playboy Mansion via a tshirt design contest. I also have a print & tshirt line through zazzle.com. Also, the recent sale of my AWIMS domain is by far the biggest business deal I’ve encountered so far online. But I must say that my biggest success is that I continue to learn from all the good times, battles, and mistakes I’ve made.

Tell us what’s so sexy about SexiDesign.com?

SexiDesign is so (damn) sexy because it is unlike any other design and marketing site around. Here, I have a no holds barred approach to the wide array of topics that I write about. The purpose of the site is to educate its readers on how prevalent sex is in design, and specifically which marketing techniques are utilized to learn from. The site has also become an outlet for beautiful sexy artwork and I can’t wait to really get into the discussion I have in store for it.

It’s funny, SD is actually spawn from originally wanting to write about porn site designs, but thinking how it would be so randomly racy for the AWIMS blog. =P

What would you say has been the greatest difficulty you’ve encountered as a designer?

Dealing with clients can irk me like the next designer. The lack of appreciation for a designer’s work is probably what will make me crossover more into a design blogger and less of a designer.

Can you tell us about any special skills you’ve had to develop outside of design?

Well I love to write so blogging has helped that tons. I have really strong interests in body language, NLP, and anything related. I do believe though that marketing is my calling and I find myself becoming more intuitive to campaigns each day.

What is your favorite piece of artwork that you’ve produced?

My favorite piece is Clouded Vision–the revised digital version. I originally painted it when I was 15, but when I got back into PS I fell in love with digital painting. The revised version was a personal breakthrough of finally beginning to understand all my years of training and trial and error as an artist. I think many artists overly critique their own works like myself, so it was nice to step back and actually admire my own work.

Who are some of your favorite Designers and Artist, and some of your favorite work from them?

I don’t think I have a favorite designer. However, my favorite artist is Frida Kahlo. I grew up learning about her life and artwork, and finally saw her exhibit in Philly. My favorite piece of hers is “Unos Cuantos Piquetitos” (A Few Small Nips). You might think I’m crazy when you see it (lol) but I view it as a look into her disturbed character and a reflection of the hardships she endured throughout her life. Plus she gave meaning and purpose to every component of her art, so I find that fascinating.

How do you feel about the current state of the Design Industry?

I think there is a difference between the design industry as a whole and the online design industry. The online design industry is currently unable to branch off from design unrelated to graphics design, web design, etc. Aside from the list posts many have grown to despise, there aren’t really sites out there to explore the other design industries in depth such as architecture, interior design, product design etc. Eventually those voids will be filled, but it’s a perspective that is lacking, and that’s probably do to the fact that no one can just become a freelance architect overnight via online tutorials. As a result, I think the online design industry is a little stagnant at times.

Have you been effective by the recession at all?

Absolutely. I lost my original business mostly due to my concerns with the recession. I’ve also had to downsize and really take a look into my goals for the future. It’s not so much a big deal to live without some luxuries or gadgets, I just want to make sure that I’m confident in my future decisions.

What advice would you give to designers starting out this year?

If design is what you want to do for your career, don’t start off designing. Seriously. Make an effort to develop your craft and technique first. Design is easy for people to turn to because they think it’s easy–just pick up PS and mess with it a bit. No. It would seriously help yourself, your future clients, as well as the design industry to go out and learn something about it first.

What would you say are the most important skills for a designer to have?

My biggest pet peeve is when people have a poor foundation in the principles of design. You’ll probably see me pointing it out on many tutorial sites, but I know from experience how  enlightening it is to just begin to understand and properly utilize a design principle. So it’s important to get out, off your computer, and take a class. Again, in reference to advice for designers, if it’s something you really want to do you’re going to have to invest some real time and money into understanding design.

How has twitter changed your life?

Twitter has definitely made my site(s) more accessible to different readers. It’s also given me a wonderful avenue to get great feedback from people. Sometimes I wonder if people are nervous to comment on SexiDesign, but I get awesome feedback that helps me understand my potential impact on the blog world. On a side note, I met my boyfriend through twitter as well as some new friends. So it has made even an impact on my personal life.

If you had to do something else with your life, what would it be and why?

Eventually I will be doing something different. Design and art in general will always be a part of my life, but I choose not to remain a designer for long. I grew up introverted so I always wanted a career that would force me to persevere beyond that, and being in the cut throat financial industry helped a lot.  In many ways, I feel like if I stay a designer then I will stay indoors, very introverted. So I want a career in marketing, PR, or some form of motivational speaking.

What are some of your plans for the future?

I definitely plan on embodying the lessons of SexiDesign. I know its potential and I think it’s important for fellow designers to hear a new, even sexy, perspective towards design. I’m sure I’ll own marketing related businesses in the future but as unpredictable as my life has been–I’m just taking it one day at a time. I’m 21 now, so I want to get back to living life and enjoying the little things that really matter.

I’m really excited to have come across some influential people and opportunities, so I can only say for now to follow my journey. And perhaps with my journey I can reward my readers with some guidance and understanding. Thanks bunches for the interview Roberto!

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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With the release of the new God of War 3 video game I couldn’t help but notice a great deal of artwork in the online community that relates to the game. Much of it is quite amazing!

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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I wanted to create something using this stock for quite a while. From the moment I saw it I knew that I wanted to try to make this concept work. Part of the image of course alludes to Pinnochio, but I also wanted to add a metaphysical aspect to it.

Roberto Blake Graphic Design Dance Puppet Dance

Inspiration

I feel that society puts strings on us to hold us in place, usually binding us in the form of lies to bend us to the agenda of unseen masters. This puts a much darker spin on the image but it was what I was thinking and feeling during its creation.

While working on this I was looping the song Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Marilyn Mason, from the soundtrack of the movie GAMER.

Tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, Wacom Intuos3 4×6

Stocks:
Model: [link]
Hand: Marcus J Ranum, [link]

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Today’s featured artist has some truly amazing work, particularly some prints available through deviantart.com. Alexiuss is an amazing digital artist based out of Canada with a fantastic array of dark artwork. In fact I have to honestly say this represents some of the best dark artwork I’ve seen in the deviantart community.

You can view this artist complete gallery at Deviantart: http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/

Neurotic Indisposition by Alexiuss

Feral Nova by Alexiuss

Death by Stress by Alexiuss

Antoymic Cyclone by Alexiuss

Insidious Discrepancy by Alexiuss

Absense of Vision by Alexiuss

Machinery of the Stars by Alexiusss

Antecedet Terminus by Alexiuss

Fate by Alexiuss

Praetorian by Alexiuss

Gabriel by Alexiuss

Chronoscape Thundersnow by Alexiuss

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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I had meant to post this sooner, but as some of you may already know I ad the pleasure of having some of my work featured in Photoshop Creative Magazine Issue 54 as part of a spread encouraging creatives to post their work to the Photoshop Creative Gallery. I’ve been an avid reader of Photoshop Creative for quite sometime so it was a real treat and honor to be featured in their magazine. Interestingly on the page next to the one I was featured on Alena Lazareva who I had the pleasure of interviewing a few months early was also featured!

photoshop-creative-feature-issue54

Aside from the sense of pride and accomplishment in seeing my work printed in one of my favorite publications it also made me take myself a lot more seriously. As creatives we all try to keep in mind that others are viewing our work, our development and our growth, but once your work reaches a such a broad audience it really bring this home for you.

I received a lot of positive response from this and some new interest from this feature, and it has definitely been encouraging. I would say to any other digital artist reading this to always keep striving to achieve goals and produce the best work that you can, and submit to as many venues as possible, you never know how these things will turn out or where they will lead.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Its been a while since I’ve done a featured artist from deviant art, I apologize because its long over due, and the new year has given me a new schedule as well as many new projects to handle. but fear not, the days of slack are now behind us!  Today’s artist that I’ve feature has some work that simply blew me away when I saw it. Her work managed to find its way into my favorites collection fairly quickly. She is 27 year old Turkish Graphic Designer Asli Yeniay Kizilay, and her work is just amazing.

Angelica by Wiksa

Angel's Hell by Wiksa

Scream of Hope by Wiksa

Lament by Wiksa

Misanthrope by Wiksa

Fabels Tragedy by Wiksa

Sear Me by Wiksa

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Promote Yourself As A Graphic Designer

I recently decided to shoot a series of videos giving advice and discussing various topics for Designers and Digital Artist. One thing that stood out is the importance of self promotion and branding. Though this was addressed in my design education years ago, I don’t feel that enough emphasis was placed on how important it was. Self promotion, time management, and a good portfolio will make or break your career in this industry, more so than anything else from what I’ve seen.

In this video I cover a lot of questions that new/young Designers and Digital Artist have asked me, but also address things that are relevant to any designer or artist looking to get more work or recognition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O02iGAzqflw

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Today I interview a truly great and talented Graphic Designer and Digital Artist who has been featured in many publications both for his artwork and tutorials.  To be quite honest he is one of my personal heroes in the creative industry and possibly one of the most talented Digital Illustrators I have seen! Many of you will be familiar with his work! He is UK Digital Artist David Cousens of Cool Surface

David its an honor to be interviewing someone as talented as you, who has been featured in Digital Arts, Advanced Photoshop and several other magazines! Let’s start with you telling us a bit about yourself.

Thanks very much, you’re too kind!  I’m 29, I run Cool Surface with my lovely wife Sarah in the South West of England. I’ve been designing and illustrating full-time since 2006, although I did a few things before that to get my foot in the door.  Our list of clients include the BBC, Kingfisher/Macmillan Publishing, Adidas, Letraset, Tick Tock Publishing, Franklin Watts/Hachette and just about every digital design magazine out there.  I’m normally cheeky, sarcastic and friendly, unless you catch me before 9am where I am sluggish, incoherent and almost borderline hostile; I am not a morning person!  Oh, and I love drawing!

When did you first get into digital artwork, and how did you know it’s what you wanted to do with your life?

I first got into Digital artwork in 2002 when I was asked to produce the advertising poster for the UK Transformers convent ion “Transforce”.  I’d done the previous year’s poster in black & white, but this year the poster needed to be in colour.  Now, I’d never made a proper bit of colour work in my life; I had this stupid idea that I only needed to draw in pencil because I wanted to become a comic book penciller, I didn’t need to know about anything silly like “colour”!.  Fortunately my Dad had been nagging me to try digital art for a while and had already got me a copy of Photoshop to practice with (Thanks Dad!).  A quick search online later and I’d learned the basics of Photoshop colouring and painted the entire image with a mouse!  Impressed with my tenacity (or possibly filled with pity!) Dad bought me my first graphics tablet so that I wouldn’t have to endure colouring with a mouse ever again!

Working digitally was amazing; I could suddenly use colour in my pieces because it wouldn’t cover/ruin my linework.  The extra impact that colour gave my work also got people actually looking at my art and appreciating it.  Being such a sucker for praise and flattery, there was no turning back.

Your Digital Illustrations are nothing short of amazing, how did you develop your particular style, and why illustration?

I remember spending years worrying about finding my style and one day I realised it was there all along, which I think is probably the same with most artists.  My style most likely came about through my love of comics and cartoons, it’s been described as “a fusion of Eastern and Western influences” which is a fancy way of saying it’s a mixture of Marvel comics and Manga/Anime.  I love dynamic images with lots of action and movement, interesting colour schemes and humour so I try to incorporate those elements in as often as possible.  I also love throwing in lots of small details in my images for people to find.  I love it when people tell me they’ve noticed bit of symbolism or a small reference or joke in my artwork because it means that they’re really looking closely and enjoying my work.

I chose illustration initially because there were no degrees in sequential illustration in England at that time (they started a year later funnily enough) and I thought that having a degree would look better to future employers.  As it turned out, illustration was a better choice for me as I really enjoy seeing an image through from start to finish and I can get to flex a few more artistic muscles by doing illustration than I would be if I was drawing comics.  There aren’t nearly as many rules in illustration, pretty much anything you think of can be incorporated into your work.

We’ve seen your work as well as tutorials in magazines all over, is there a secret behind your success?

I have incriminating photos of every magazine editor; either my work gets published or the photos do!  I think the real reason my tutorials are well received is because I don’t hold anything back.  If I know how to do something I’ll gladly share it.  There is nothing sadder than somebody with a skill who won’t pass it on to other people.  It’s like they’re afraid that telling people how to do something will make their own art less special so they keep everything to themselves and only give vague answers.  I also try to make my tutorials as friendly and accessible as the word count allows.  Magazine word counts can be restrictive sometimes but I always try to explain why I’m using a certain method as opposed to just giving technical instructions as it’s much more helpful to people when they can understand why I’m doing things in a certain way.

Another tip I can give to people for getting magazine work is to NEVER miss a deadline; deadlines are the most important thing to a magazine so you can’t disappoint an editor.  If you have to stay up late and work weekends, that’s what you do.  It’s a small price to pay for a job where you get paid to do something you love.  Make yourself really easy to get hold of whether it’s through email, Twitter or by phone; it’s very reassuring to clients that they can find out how things are going at a moments notice.  Being reliable and friendly will get you a long way in this industry.

As an artist where do you draw your inspiration from for these fantastic images?

It’s funny, last month we met with a friend in publishing who saw our image “Passengers” that we made for Advanced Photoshop and she said “Wow!  That’s really surreal!  How do you come up with these images”  and I was a bit surprised as I didn’t really think there was anything surreal about a white haired girl in a cocktail dress riding a giant turtle suspended by balloons with two engines coming out of it’s shell.  Then again, Sarah and I are a bit weird.  It’s living out in the countryside that does it!

I’m drawn to fantastical things; they tend to float around my head after I’ve seen them and then they seem as normal as someone walking a dog.  Sometimes things will just inspire me; an attractive model, an exciting scene in a film or even playing a computer game.  I tend to look and examine things more than some people as I’m always trying to work out how to draw things.

Are there any special tools that you use to create your images?

The main thing I use to create my images is my pride & joy: The Cintiq 21UX!  It’s a thing of beauty.  I was worried whether it was a wise investment when I first got it, as Sarah was more than a little reluctant to invest so much money in one piece of equipment (it cost more than my car!) but it improved my workflow so much that it must have paid for itself within the first few months!

My other favourite drawing tool is a Prismacolor dark blue pencil (the same sort of pencil as used by 2d animators).  They have such a nice texture to them & you don’t get any smudging that you do with standard pencils.  I only tend to use these when I’m just sketching for myself, my paid work is pretty much 99% Cintiq based these days.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as an artist?

Other than getting over the initial fear of failure and rejection that stopped me getting my art out there for a couple of years after my degree, I’d say the biggest challenge I faced was developing RSI (repetitive strain injury).

As an artist the 2 things you need are your hands and your eyes and one day without warning my arm developed a pain so intense that I couldn’t actually grip a pen; it was actually terrifying.  I rested it for an entire week hoping it would simply heal, but then I started to draw and it came back, quickly and fiercely.  I had magazine deadlines to hit and had just signed a contract to draw 2 books so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I needed to draw but whenever I did my arm was literally burning with pain.  I developed a temporary workaround of heating up a wheat bag in the microwave and resting it on my arm to relieve the pain when it got too much, give myself 20 minutes and start again.  Outside of work hours I would do as little as possible with my right arm, I even learned to brush my teeth left handed!

Instead of being smart and going to the doctors I figured this would just heal itself eventually, but even with a lot of rest I felt pain every day.  It occurred to me that this may be permanent and that I would feel this pain for the rest of my life, which as you can imagine was a little depressing.  After a year of learning to do everything but draw left-handed I’d decided that enough was enough and I should seek some medical advice.  It turned out that although teaching myself to use my left hand was “impressive” it was actually harming my recovery.

Apparently my years of slouching and not doing much other than type and draw had slightly compressed my spine which meant the signals from my brain to my arm weren’t getting to my arm properly causing nerve damage.  Luckily I was sent to a physiotherapist who cracked my back and my arm started to improve immediately.  Within a month I experienced a day without pain for the first time in over a year, which was amazing, especially as I’d consigned myself to my arm feeling bad as a permanent thing!  I now stretch every day and my arm is almost back to normal.  I still can’t type for great lengths and the amount of time I can play computer games is limited but to be able to draw without worrying about permanent damage is just lovely.  Nothing will make you appreciate something as much as almost losing it.

The moral of this story: Stretch every morning and try not to slouch!  Oh and if you have something wrong, don’t self diagnose and live with suffering.  Go see a specialist!  Medical healthcare exists for a reason!

Who would you say have been your biggest supporters as an artist?

Ooh, tough question.  My Dad has been my biggest supporter (actually my entire family have been great in that respect) but we’re probably looking for a slightly less obvious answer here.  I’ve been lucky in that a lot of the people I’ve met have been extremely supportive.  Emma Davenport (formerly Emma Cake, editor of Advanced Photoshop magazine) has been one of my biggest supporters.  She saw my work when I posted it in the Advanced Photoshop Peer Pressure forums and not only put it straight in the magazine but commissioned me to write my first tutorial for the following issue.  Emma was lovely to deal with and offered me a lot of work (both illustrating and writing) which really helped me out during my first year of professional work.  Emma and I remained good friends after she left the magazine and she still does everything she can to support my work.  Excellent artist Matt Dixon was particularly nice and offered me some great advice when I was starting out, and was the first “big artist” to link to my website, which was particularly good of him because my career hadn’t even got moving at that point.  It was a nice endorsement as it he didn’t link to many people, and I was the only non-established artist on his list.  Shout outs should also go to author Clive Gifford, author Adrian J Watts, former Digital Arts editor Lynn Wright, ex-Computer Arts editor Garrick Webster, and artists Steph Laberis, Aly Fell, Jonny Duddle and an artistic collaborator Tom Scholes who was good enough to give me some great crits without knowing how I’d respond to them!

Is there anything you’d like to say to up and coming designers and digital artist out there?

The design industry is a great place; it’s full of amazingly talented and generous people, and unlike other industries, very supportive of new talent.  Just be polite, listen to the advice people give you and work very VERY hard and you’ll do fine.

Most importantly: Enjoy what you do.  There are times when you’ll be inclined to complain about being an illustrator which is quite frankly ridiculous.  You’re getting paid to draw, it really doesn’t get much better than that.

Thanks again for an amazing interview!

You’re entirely welcome.  Now where’s my money?  Hello?

LOL we love a sense of humor around here! Again David thanks for a great interview! To view more of David Cousens work you can visit his websites, and get in touch with the following information. And please remember to show your support by spreading the word on twitter, facebook, digg, or wherever you feel like!

Websites
The Art of David and Sarah Cousens – www.CoolSurface.com
Cool Surface Lite – The Art blog! http://coolsurface.blogspot.com

Contact
email: David@CoolSurface.com, Sarah@CoolSurface.com

Follow us!
Twitter http://twitter.com/DavidCousens
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/David.Cousens
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/8066621@N06
Myspace http://www.myspace.com/443380036

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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