“Peace begins with a smile”
My name is Joey Welsh. I’m a digital artist and children's author located in Gilbert, AZ. I create illustrations that make you smile. I have been painting digitally since 2005 using both an iPad and a Wacom Cintiq tablet to create my work. I use a vivid & figurative style of rendering.
I began my career as a color pencil artist. However, the time-consuming process of that medium limited me to producing only a few works each year. With a background in graphic design, I began exploring digital art as solution. It provided the same ability for detail as the pencils did, but the work could be completed in about a third of the time.
Initially, I would scan my pencil sketches into the computer and paint over them digitally. Then Apple released an iPad you could draw on. Using Procreate, I now begin my ideas on the iPad. I sketch up the illustration and block in color with some detail before moving the art over to my computer. I use Corel Painter software, drawing on my Wacom Cintiq, to finish my art. It is a stroke-by-stroke process to build up value, color and texture. Each illustration can take up to 40-50 hours to complete, but some have taken me as much as 100 hours.
My goal is create work that will engage the viewer with my sense of humor. As a kid, I spent my time cartooning and filling my imagination with the works of Richard Scarry, Charles Schulz and Gary Larson. I was fascinated by their ability to pack so much humor and story into a single panel of art. Their work still puts a smile on my face to this day and I try to emulate that in my work.
Printing my digital art
One of the most challenging aspects of being a digital artist is reproducing your art on a printer. This took a lot of experimentation, trial and error to perfect. Initially, I printed all my work on watercolor paper and framed the art under glass. This was fine in the early years, but framed art is both heavy and fragile. And as my library of work grew and I began doing more and more art shows across the country, I needed a more durable and lightweight solution.
In 2008, I began to print my art on canvas. This was a welcome change to my product line. The canvas prints don’t require framing and I could fit a dozen of them in a box for art show travel. Each canvas is printed using archival inks and then sealed with three coats of varnish that protects it from fingerprints, moisture and fading.
I print, seal and stretch every canvas I produce myself. I don’t use a third-party printer so I can ensure the highest quality. I enjoy the craftsmanship of creating my art from start to finish. It has taken me a long time to prefect this process, but the results are stunning reproductions of my work.