"Drowsy Elephant Garden" Painting

Ellis Ricketts (b. 1989, Windsor, Canada) is a painter, illustrator, and mixed media artist who lives and works in Toronto as a concept and graphic artist in the film industry. He's a graduate of Humber College for 3D Animation and sometimes uses 3D arts in creating creative environments and textures. Every chance he has, he puts towards creating art for work and entertainment. His main media is traditional pen and ink, or digital illustration but often mix media’s for interesting effect.

I work in pen, ink, pencil, and paints because after trying nearly every other media, these ones help me express myself creatively in the highest level detail as I look for in the development process. I'm inspired by many different artists wielding many different styles. If I had to pick a few, currently I have my sights on the styles from Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dalí, James Jean, and Lauren Marx, and the late Kim Jung Gi to name a few. Although these artist styles don't all reflect in my work, they all inspire me in other ways including technique, work ethic, and mastery.

The main subject of my work is usually the blending of fiction and reality. My style usually strays away from realism and goes towards the trend of dark fantasy, or dream-like dimension. This is important to me because reality is what we all face day to day. It's important to me to preserve my imagination and not have to hold myself back with the constraints of paradigm truths in my art.

My art-making process consists of research and reference building, colour sampling, and loosely sketching ideas. When working on the final piece, I usually put the references away and create based on information that stays in my head, free-styling with a brush pen, pencil, or paint brush. This is important to understanding my work because it reflects how my thoughts come out in branches, how I don't use tricks or perfection to tackle my art, how I show a freeing expression with each stroke.