I was born and raised in Sicily, in a town at the foot of Mount
Etna where, during my high school and university years, I used to
ski intensely on. Skiing is one of my strongest passions.
I began my career drawing comics and creating illustrations with
the brushes and airbrush.
In 1981 I published my comic entitled "Superpipe" and an
illustration on an Italian issue of "Playboy" magazine. During the
same year I moved from Sicily to Rome and joined the Illustrators
Association, which had just born in Italy.
For a couple of years I continued to produce comics and
illustrations, including the first works on pin-ups, beginning my
collaboration as freelance illustrator with Italian subsidiaries
of the most important international advertising agencies. During
the 1980s, the advertising market in Italy offered alluring
opportunities of financial reward and professional recognition and
soon my time was booked up by these publicity work, made mostly of
hyperreal illustrations.
During the 1990s, my rapport with advertising remained quite
intense, but I was no longer having much fun. I was curious about
multimedia and I experienced the creation of a number of
interactive CD ROM and animations for internet. If you are
interested, you can view these works at
www.visualshop.it
In 2001, I went back to one of my first passions: the creation of
pin-up paintings. Digital painting, that is, because at that point
I had already substituted the brushes with the graphic tablet. I
had began to learn how to use the computer during the 1990s,
nevertheless continuing to use acrylic colors, brushes, and
airbrush as I always had done before. Only after I found the means
and the necessary manual skill to create with digital media almost
all that I was creating with the natural media, I began using them
professionally.
Today, in fact, I work almost exclusively in digital, even if I am
planning for the near future to go back to the old tools for a few
traditional illustrations.
http://www.lorenzodimauro.com