About Tom Baker

I studied Illustration at the Art Students League in NYC and Stevenson Academy of Traditional Painting in New York. I was trained as a traditional painter in oil and pastel from my mentor Harold Stevenson (who learned his craft from Norman Rockwell). I was an Illustrator for many years working for many companies in NYC especially Simon and Shuster, where I did covers for Steven King and Clive Barker to name a few. I now combine Illustrator and Photoshop with my traditional ink drawings, I am still a traditional painter in that the concept is still based on an original sketch. I scan the sketch and work over it as the base layer, as I lay stroke after stroke (coloring them as I place them) into the sketch until I render the painting! There are no filters or computer help. I then work in as many layers as I need, one painting can have as many as 2000 layers. These layers all have my brush strokes that I created previous to the start of the painting with ink on paper.