Tim Simmons
Believe it or not, I wasn't born painting portraits. I was born in 1963 and I grew up in West Memphis, Arkansas. At the age of about eleven I learned how to play the guitar. At age nineteen I quit college and formed a rock and roll band and we toured the U. S. for approximately a year and half before we broke up. I had gotten married just before the band's break-up and after the break-up I went to Arkansas State University to finish up my degree in Computer Science. During this time, I had been recording music ideas on a four-track recorder in my Jonesboro, Arkansas apartment. After earning my degree, I worked various jobs, such as an office gopher at the Memphis Auto Theft Bureau, a salesperson at a local music store, a telemarketer for MCI, a phone technician for MCI, and eventually as a computer programmer for five years at FedEx back when it was known as Federal Express. I won many awards during my five year tenure at FedEx and it was during this time that I finished my first and only instrumental guitar CD. Completing the CD took me approximately one and a half years and for a while I was the rock guitar king of the Mid-South. I sent a copy of my CD, "Eternal Dream", to Recording Magazine. The title song was reviewed in the August 1995 issue and received twelve out of ten stars! I placed several of my songs on MP3's web site and my remake of "Eleanor Rigby" went to the number three spot in the guitar rock category. my CD was selling in local stores and on the web and after five years with FedEx, I quit to pursue a career in music. I began teaching guitar and doing consulting work as a means of income. I created two video soundtracks for the Army Corps of Engineers as well as a children's website. Unfortunately, I managed to injure six of my fingers and after about two years I was forced to give up playing the guitar and using those fingertips completely. Two and a half decades of guitar playing suddenly came to a screeching halt. I had nerve damage to both ring, thumb and index fingertips and three neurologists couldn't provide any answers. My fingertips became so sensitive that I couldn't touch anything and I had to keep them wrapped up day and night for about a year. After about three years of abstinence, they have improved to the point where they don't constantly feel like third degree burns day and night but I still cannot use the fingertips. Now being unable to earn a living playing the guitar, I was forced once again to get a "real job". I sent out resumes and after about nine months I was hired at a local college in Memphis, Tennessee teaching computer-related courses. After being unemployed for so long, it was nice to get a paycheck again. But what about art? For years I had been dabbling with art in one form or fashion but I wasn't all that good and I never had any art lessons in my life. I loved watching Bill Alexander paint oil paintings in about 30 minutes on television. Several years later, another man came on the scene doing basically the same thing - the wet-on-wet technique. His name was Bob Ross. These were always landscapes that were painted with fairly large brushes and completed in half an hour. One day I just thought to myself, "I can do that!". So, I bought the necessary supplies, videotaped one of the shows on TV and tried my best to copy the painting. My first attempts were pretty lame but after a few paintings my technique began to improve. I was doing these types of paintings off and on for several years and never really achieved any great level of proficiency and the technique didn't really allow for much in the way of correcting mistakes. So, I started using acrylic paint and began copying photographs. The acrylic dried within minutes and could be thinned with water instead of turpentine or mineral spirits, thereby allowing me to paint indoors and correct mistakes by simply painting over them. A few years before this timeframe, sometime around 1995, I had visited a friend's house and checked out a neat device known as an airbrush. I had never actually seen one in person and was simply fascinated. I guess I knew from that point onward that I was hooked on the airbrush even though I would only come to use it a handful of times in the next nine years. I ordered my own airbrush, a Vega 2000, some Createx paint, a small air compressor and began making big messes on posterboard. My first attempts were, of course, disastrous and even if I had any pictures of my first attempts I'd be too embarrassed to post them here! I improved with time and practice but from 1995 to about 2003 I probably had not painted ten paintings with the airbrush. The reason is that I was still working full-time at FedEx and I was still doing the Bill Alexander/Bob Ross oil paintings. The urge to get serious about airbrushing, and art in general, hit me sometime late in 2003. Up to this point, I had not painted one portrait in my life but I made some decisions that took my results to a new level. For starters, I decided to get a new airbrush and compressor. I did some research and finally decided to get an Iwata airbrush. The HP-SB is a finely-tuned instrument, giving me a much smoother spray and more detail than my previous airbrush could muster. I also changed to ComArt paint which gave me more consistent results and less clogging of the airbrush. The third decision was to order some instructional videos where I could see firsthand how the professionals do it. Finally, instead of painting in my garage as I had done for years, I decided to turn my last spare bedroom into my art studio (spare bedroom number one was actually the music studio). No more mosquitoes. No more heat stroke. No more putting off painting because of the humidity or cold. I could now paint 24 hours a day, seven days a week in my own art studio. Over the years, I have won several awards in local and regional art shows. Read a few of my thoughts on art in "What Is Art?".