Reza Rasoli, who goes by Rezatron on the Internets, is an Art Director at Three Legged Legs and he loves to doodle. But, I have to admit – I was completely fooled by his work. When I featured District Die here on The Watercolor Gallery I firmly believed that his work was done in traditional watercolor. As it turns out, Reza uses digital tools rather than real-world ones to do his work.
Well played Reza. Well played.
That doesn’t make his work any less interesting to me so I asked Reza to answer a few questions for us and here are his responses.
Reza, you old trickster, how did you get started in “watercolor”?
“I don’t actually know how to paint, I just doodle. But I wanted to take some of my doodles to the next level. So initially I just took some watercolor textures that existed and used them as a base to bring some color into my line drawings, digitally. I liked that it looked like I knew what I was doing with painting, even though it was a total hack cheat. But it looked legit, so I adopted the watercolor look.”
How have your tools changed from when you got started until now, and what are your favorite tools currently?
“I technically don’t actually work in watercolor. I inevitably end up working digitally. But I have created custom watercolor splotches, strokes, spills on paper and scanned them in and used them to digitally paint my drawings. In addition to custom photoshop brushes. I like having the overall control to change, resize, color correct etc at the ease of a button.
I bought a bunch of watercolor supplies, brushes, paper, paint, the works, but they are all sitting collecting dust in the corner. I have yet to make an illustration in analog. I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually, and I’m sure it’ll suck, and I’m sure I’ll just end up throwing it away and go back to the digital world.”
How do you prefer to work? Plein air, from a photograph, from memory? At a desk, outdoors, in a closet?
“So far all my illustrations on my site have been done during downtime at Three Legged Legs’ studio space. Ideally I’d like to work on a wireless tablet pc sunken in a comfortable couch watching TV, but thats not gonna happen anytime soon.”
What has been your favorite painting or painting experience?
“When I was 5 I used to paint with real paint and it was fun.”
Perhaps you could name two artists that have inspired you?
“Lora Zombie (who has been featured on The Watercolor Gallery before) and Gideon Boomer, a fellow Otis Alumni.”
Thanks to Reza for telling the truth about his work! I think the watercolor medium has inspired many artists in many other fields of work – just as much as it has me – and for that we welcome Reza as an honorary member of our gallery.
In our next interview we will be featuring the works of an artist in the desert in Jerome, Arizona. Stay tuned.