2003: Dipped a toe into computer science II at the university. Dropped out real quick. Switched to communications design – a much better fit.
2003: Started freelancing as an illustrator. That never really stopped.
2009: Graduated Dipl. Kommunikationsdesigner from HBK Saar. I illustrated Joanna Newsom’s song “Monkey & Bear” as propaganda posters.
2011 – 2021: I explored leadership roles on the visual side of the games industry: concept artist, art director, team lead, creative advisor, talent scout, design director.
2010s – 2020s: Taught design and concept art in various schools. I like sharing stuff and had the opportunity to do so there.
2025 april – august: Selling strawberries, ’cause before starting university was the best time to try something completely different.
2025: Let’s try the magic reset button in real life: started a dual study program in career guidance (Beratung für Bildung, Beschäftigung und Beruf – HdbA Schwerin, Agentur für Arbeit Berlin Süd
2025 december: I quit the dual study program.
2026: I guess it’s back to freelance
Currently
I’m always going through books, albums, and other things – here’s what stuck lately:
Of this new series of bird-inspired artworks this was the second one I started and while I had very little trouble drawing the bird itself – a Großer Brachvogel – Eurasian curlew – the overall image wasn’t so straightforward. It went from painterly to Charley Harper flat to what it is now. You’ll see exactly what I mean in the following steps.
based on this initial sketch next I blocked out base shapes and painted in the background. Initially I thought to contrast the graphic shapes of the bird with a dry brush-like look for the background. The curlew was to stand in shallow water and a streak of sunlight was to hit both the bird and the seagrass behind him.
While on a short vacation between christmas and new years we visited a small bookshop where I happened to pick up a guide book to birds. Despite having done a few artworks on birds I still don’t really know much about birds, not really at least. I still struggle to recognize even those birds I’ve created artworks about for example, but I also don’t or didn’t have any idea about how many different birds exist. How the different birds are actually different from each other and so on because when looking at pictures of birds on the internet, you don’t really get that kind of information. You get a picture and that’s it. Hopefully I will learn more about birds using this book though right now I’m mostly using it as an artbook because damn the illustrations in there are gorgous.
This wan’t the first bird to spark my interest, more like the third, however it was the first for which I had a clear idea for an artwork right after seeing it. Most of the time I simply start doodling because I like a certain feature about a bird and then construct an image around it, not so with this Schwarzspecht – Black Woodpecker.
Given it’s name and overall black feathering I thought it fitting to create an image which overall would largely be black or very dark, and use the red accent on the birds head to make the bird pop off the background and possibly give it something mysterious or even menacing. So that’s what I blocked out next:
Recently I watched Independence Day – Resurgence, and since the movie was not that captivating, I started doing random doodles while letting it run its course. Those doodles usually are not very thought out or anything I’d consider keeping. For whatever reason, though this time I decided to take one of those drawings and turn it into something more elaborate within the length of the movie.
Preliminary sketch drawn for the illustration “Pew Pew – Kill them all”(more…)
