I've been drawing with graphite since I was in the fourth grade, which was a fair number of years ago. Granted, back then, it was just some doodles that couldn't really qualify as a "picture" per se, but I was doing it nonetheless. By the time I had reached High School, I'd played with various mediums from paint (oil, acrylic, and water colors), ink and silk screening, to colored pencil, charcoal and Conté Crayons. As I worked in these areas, I found that I really enjoyed making illustrative pieces; things that told a bit of a story in some way. But out of all those other mediums I tried, my first love was was where I started; graphite. It's the one I kept going back to, and it's the one where I've done the most work. There was always something about how graphite makes you reduce the color palette while also making you focus much more on light usage and shape definition that really appealed to me (and it still does).

After high school, I moved on to college. During my time at a pair of community colleges, as well as the university where I got my Bachelor's Degree, I tried other mediums such as lithography, 3D art, digital 2D art, and etching. During these years, I finally found my style for handing graphite, and focused on continuing to hone both it and my illustrative skills. I also learned that through digital art, I could create all matter of works that would be hard or impossible to do through traditional methods. Things like pixelwork became a big interest for me, and I learned how to reproduce my traditional style in the digital world.

As with any artist, I'm still learning and growing within the various aspects of my work, while seeing how illustrative concepts can be incorporated into the worlds of Flash, website creation, and most recently, audio work. The latter came about thanks to my enjoyment of writing original music (piano/orchestral mostly, with some retro Electronica thrown in), and my desire to get my music to sound better mixing/production-wise. And it was that need that eventually got combined with my writing of short stories and novels, while I was attending college. In one of my classes, I was allowed to do an audio scene instead of a music project. So, I wrote a brand new story, did some voice acting and most of the Foley sound effects, and set about mixing it all together. The end result, was "The Dragon's Den." That project was the final audio bug that I needed to have bite me, and I've been working at getting better at audio mixing ever since.

Aside from the illustrative visual/aural works, I've also become experienced at graphic design, editing images, manipulating photographs, and repairing damaged photographs, as well as trying my hand at some video editing and website creation. Those things, combined with my music, writing and illustrative images, have given me a considerable amount of insight into narrative structures outside of writing fiction, and how a lot of different areas can contain at least a little story of some kind if it's wanted.

So, that's where I stand today. Writer, illustrator, image and audio editor, musician, graphic designer, and apprentice video editor and website creator. What does the future hold for me? I don't know, but like everyone else, I've got hopes and dreams. And with any luck, this website will help some of those things come true in the years ahead.

Now that you've gotten a look at some of what I've made, if you're interested in hiring me for any work that you feel falls into my areas of experience, feel free to contact me. I'd love to discuss what you've got planned, and how I can help. You can find all my contact info on my contact page. And with that, thanks for taking a look at my work, and best wishes to you.

- M.T. Yankovich