About the Artist

All about me...

or the story of Blake...

After retiring as an International Man of Mystery and giving away his amassed fortune, Blake soon found he needed to do something with his time. He chose to pursue an education in a prestigious institution in one of the many fields that captured his interest. While earning his MS in Zoology, he kept alive his artistic side by sketching and drawing animals wherever he encountered them. He also kept himself alive during this time with those same sketches and drawings which he sold at very low prices in order to eat. After earning a degree he refined his interest even more, and stayed in school, earning a Doctorate of Science in Marine Biology. He soon found himself at an awkward impasse of having to choose to pursue a career in marine biology, or a career in art, because he could not have both. He has shown his work in galleries and various venues around the world, and is in numerous private collections. He has done murals for the 96 Olympics, and pieces for nonprofit organizations, like the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota. He creates stunning pen & ink wildlife art and commissions of firefighters, rescue workers and law enforcement officers. To help him answer the call of the sea, he recently purchased a 38 ft. Ingrid sail boat which he named the "Knotty Boy". After the show season this year he plans on taking several months off to sail to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or whichever way his compass points...

NOW, if you're looking for something a little less tounge-in-cheek...

This is probably the one single area that I have the most difficult time talking about, and so will probably be the one area that I may run off on wild tangents while talking about myself. - Does anyone really want to know how it was that I came to be in the right place at the right time to save several puppies form being abused/beaten/killed by their owner? Probably not, but the fact that I love animals you may want to know, so now I have to choose what to put here, and what to leave out. Truely a hard task, after all, I have a lot of years to weed down to one itty bitty page out here on this huge world wide web. I will do my best at focusing on my art, and why I do what I do, but please forgive the occassional story.(ask anyone who knows and they will tell you that I can keep talking by telling stories all day - on all kinds of topics)

I was born... enough about that, everyone was, let's fast forward a few years...

I can first remember really becoming interested in art through comic books. Yep, you read that right. I was first interested in comic books. Back then, comics weren't all this "dark" stuff that they are today, and they truely were entertaining. I read comics to both look at the cool art, and to read stories where the good guys won, and the bad guys lost, and sometimes you had to wait for the next month to make sure. Comics also went a long way in expanding my knowlege of the world around me, my vocabulary, and a sense of adventure. If I didn't know what a word meant, I had to look it up. If a character's name was cool, I would look that up too, as I found many of the Marvel� characters were named from other famous literary works, and mythology. So, I increased my reading to take those sources in as well.

Reading the works from history, I soon came to wonder where I came from. I asked my parents, and grandparents, and got the basic family history lesson of who gave birth to who, and where they were from, ect. I found that my ancestors came from a couple of different places (as most kids in the US will find to be the case) and started to look into the history of my ancestors. As you can probably tell, I am one of those people who is curious about everything. I found history to be very fascinating and really got into it, finding similarities with the cultures the further back I went.

But, I was still hooked on comics, and soon found myself picking up the pencil to try and duplicate what I saw. This, of course, was not my first attempt at any kind of art, because I had always drawn with crayons, and school type watercolours, and markers on paper, drapes, doors, walls, bed speads, ect. This was, however, my first real efforts to actually make art for the sake of others to view it. I think I was around 6 or 7. I would draw the characters the way that I thought they would look, and compare them to the comics. Needless to say, Romita, Byrne, Kirby, and the others had nothing to worry about...yet. I looked at the way they drew the characters, and why they were like that, and why mine didn't look "right". I soon learned a lot about anatomy form copying their characters. I would look at their drawings, and copy what I saw onto another piece of paper. I didn't know at the time that I was actually learning a great skill, in learning to draw what I saw instead of drawing what I thought something should look like. When I was about 12 or 13 I started really wanting to draw comics for a living, and most of that can be attributed to some of the comics that I was really into then, including X-Men, Captain America, and Spiderman. Mostly, I can attribute it to a character named Daredevil. He was drawn by a guy relatively new to comics, but really challenged the staus quo as to how comics looked and were told, "Lanky" Frank Miller. I became a HUGE fan of both Miller's work and Daredevil. To this day I am still a big fan of both and have an extensive collection of all things Daredevil and Miller. I've even turned my wife into a big Daredevil fan...

So, I kept honing my skills to one day be a comic artist (penciler was the optimal job, but inker was almost as good.) BUT, my grandmother suggested I try some other forms of art as well as some other media. So, I started trying a little watercolour as well. I first used it to complement my pencils, and later to fill in colour after I had inked my drawings. Soon I found myself doing watercolours of subjects not relating to comic books at all. I started looking for ways to stretch my abilities, and new subjects to draw and paint. I tried reading many of the "how to" books but found that most of them really only explained how they did whatever it was they did. Most watercolour books perpetrated a style that was mostly of washes, and it wasn't useful to me as I wanted to be very realistic or have intense colour in the things I painted. I pretty much dismissed the whole "art book" thing, as I learned far more from just experimenting with the medium on my own. I still don't really care for the "wash" style of many watercolours out there. I just really don't think it takes as much control of the media as it lets the media control you. - just my opinion.

It wasn't long before a few predominant themes started appearing in my works that were not related to comic books, noteably, animals, people, and firefighters. Having access to the firehouse provided a whole different set of "real super-heroes". I should explain here that my Dad was a firefighter, and so everything about firefighters has fascinated me from an early age to this day. Now, I have to be at the firehouse on my own, as my Dad has setteled into what he likes to call his "life of leisure", which looks like anything but that. Animals were great because they offered a challenge in every media, from drawing them, to painting them, and frequently they didn't hold still for very long, unless they were napping. This again taught me valuable lessons in making art, from sketching to details, to the limits of various art making media. I wasn't one of those kids who carried a sketch pad everywhere, but I learned to look at things and events, store the details in my head and recreate it when I returned home. I learned that when it came to animals, there are a couple of key areas that make the animal work, or not. (I'm not giving away those secrets of the exact areas here!)

By the time I got to high school, I had also become interested in photography. This was a great tool to make art in and of itself, but it helped with other art making processes as well. No longer did I have to rememeber so exactly, though I still did, and do, but I did have reference in a photo as well. This really helped where there were things with a lot of movement. Animals running, Firefighter's battling the blaze, ect. I won several awards for my photography, as well as for my artwork, and thought for sure I would be off to an art school of some kind right after high school, as I had my eye set on possibly the Brooks Institute. A friend of mine thought I should go directly to Marvel Comics� and ask them for a job, because I hadn't given up on comics. By then Miller was no longer doing Daredevl, and that title had slid a bit in the art department, we thought. On retrospect, anyone who came in right after Miller had BIG shoes to fill, and the penciler that did it, William Johnson, did a good job. He also got better with each issue he did. As it turned out, I did neither the Marvel gig or the Brooks thing, so I kept learning about art on my own, and honing my skills as I went. (This is NOT to say that I wouldn't mind doing a book for Marvel, so if you're from Marvel, give me a call!)

I really started searching my ancestry more and more, and the art forms from them more and more. I became fascinated with the intricate works, and how the works from different peoples were more similar the further back you go. Celtic and Scandanavian designs in particular. I started to emulate this style as well as the style that my work had evolved too. Celtic Knotwork opened a huge door in my mind. It was fun, and was a new way for me to explore the past as well as the future. I started incorporating it into "normal" designs of animals, and other people. I did pieces that were strictly Celtic. Many pieces were very rough as I hadn't yet figured out how to lay out the work for perfect symetry. One day I was drawing on a piece of graph paper when it hit me, and I have been fine ever since. I have done some pieces that you won't see on this webpage, but might see on CD covers, ads in magazines, or at some famous places around the country, that all involve Celtic style art.

I was at the Dallas Zoo one day when a lady was watching me do some sketches at the hippo area. I was just doing some quick sketches, and a few more detailed ones so that I would have some references. I still like to do those even though I usually take my camera as well. Anyway, I didn't notice her watching me, but did notice her standing back a bit watching the animals for what seemed like a long time. After a bit she walked over and introcduced herself as a teacher at a local school, and wondered if I just did this for fun, or if I actually did this for a living. I told her I did art for a living, though at the time the majority of my income came from doing commercial graphic design on computers. She asked if I would be interested in doing a field trip with one of her classes to the zoo. I was hesitant, but she said she would buy lunch, and pay me for my time. I said sure, though I had no idea how to "teach" someone how to do what I do.

I figured out a basic plan, an when I went to the school, the plan went right out the window. I just decided to wing it. I introduced myself, and gave a brief description of what I did. It seemed that each of the students was interested in working in a different media, and that was cool with me because I could understand that completely. After an hour or so of getting the basics down in the classroom, and answering a bunch of questions, the kids, teacher and I packed all our gear up and headed out to the zoo. We took the trip to the zoo for the afternoon, and I spent that day teaching the kids how to actually "SEE" what they were looking at. I know you're now saying, but everyone who has vision, or sight, can "see". True, but at the same time it is not true. You have spent a lifetime seeing what is around you. If I asked you to draw a ball, you would draw what you expected the ball to look like. But, you might not draw the ball exactly as it looks to you at the moment, because of what you expect it to look like. (If you are interested in a class or workshop, talk to your favourite zoological society or organization or school and have them contact me to teach a workshop in your area. Info on that can be found by following the link on the animal images page. Or School and Zoological Information)

It was a great experience for both the kids and myself. I soon found myself taking these "workshops" to all kinds of schools for all ages of kids through high school, and other organisations and art clubs. In the mean time, I continued to work on design projects and started doing fine art festivals. Festivals are fun because you get to travel to different parts of the country and talk to all kinds of people. Traveling the "circuit" can get a bit tiring, and I usually make it to 8-10 shows per year. I encourage everyone to go to their local arts festivals in their area so that festivals continue to happen, and they keep trying to attract new artists. PLUS, you get the benefit of actually getting to talk to the artist who created the work. All of the other artists that I have met out on the road have been very friendly, and are always willing to talk about what they do. They enjoy the converstations as much as the people who attend the festivals. It's one of the reasons they sell their art on the street instead of a gallery.

Now, I still do art festivals everywhere except the west coast and the upper east coast. I have been doing an increased number of commissions for firefighters and their families, as well as other rescue personel and law enforcement officers. I also continue to do teaching/eductaional workshops for zoological societies, schools and other similar non profit groups. If you want more information on any of these, just EMAIL ME. I also create 3-D art in the form of found art sculptures.
Well, that is basically a bit of background on me and where the art influences came from. I will wrap up with this small bio that was done about me in a program at one of the festivals I attended...

"A native of Dallas, TX, Blake Ovard loves to draw and paint people, animals, and things in the world around him. Blake has studied the way humans interact with themselves, creatures around the globe, and their surroundings. Blake has undertaken a study of wildlife around the world, and has devoted thousands of hours to capturing the images of the fantastic array of creation with pencil, ink, and paint. His "zoo" series is highly sought after by collectors of wildlife art, and several pieces are in the Smithsonian Collection. He believes strongly in the prevention of animal cruelty, the preservation of nature and charity. Blake is also an accomplished figurative painter, having won several awards for his works depicting rescue workers and firefighters in action. His work has been praised as both moving and thought provoking. We would like to strongly reccomend you stop by today to see his unique vision of the world around him." Back to the Top