1-Who are you?

My name is Paul Goodfield and I’m from Cardiff, South Wales, UK. I was always interested in art from a young age and spent a large part of my childhood with my head stuck in sketchbooks. I was into tabletop war gaming in my early teenage years (Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons, etc) and the incredible art that surrounded that (Ian Miller, Adrian Smith) was a big influence. My grandfather was also an amateur painter so maybe an artistic nature is somewhere in my genes!

I studied Graphic Design in art college, but after graduating I ended up going down a more tech-oriented career path. When the pandemic hit, I was furloughed for a few months so found myself with a lot of free time on my hands. That’s when I ended up buying an iPad Pro and getting back into spending more time making art.

Other hobbies include playing guitar, hiking and video gaming.

2-What do you do for a living? How does making art fit in your life or what's your daily art routine like?

I’m a Web Developer for a creative studio called Toward (https://toward.studio), so essentially I spend my days building websites. I’ve been working there for around 20 years, so more or less since I graduated. It’s a very different discipline than art and forces me to use the logical side of my brain, which doesn’t always come naturally!

The art I produce is strictly as a hobby at the moment, so it’s only something I do in my spare time. I try not to force myself to draw if I’m not in the mood, so I don’t really have a routine as such. However, after coding all day I usually embrace the chance to engage the creative side of my brain to restore some balance.

3-How would you describe your art style? What do you think helped you develop it?

I still feel like I’m working towards finding a style I’m totally happy with, but generally speaking the work I do is very much in the style of traditional oil painting and charcoal. I love the work of artists from the Impressionist era, so I’m always trying to make my work feel looser and more painterly. It’s a constant battle however, as my instinctual way of working is much tighter. I mostly do portrait work but occasionally do the odd still life or landscape.

Prior to getting the iPad, I was doing some charcoal work on paper which prompted me to start watching instructional art videos on YouTube (Proko, Marco Bucci). These type of videos helped immensely in terms of understanding form, value and colour theory. I still spend a large amount of my free time watching tutorial videos and I’m always picking up new tips, ideas and inspiration from these.

I also occasionally make vintage comic book style pieces, which are posted to a separate Instagram account (@twinpeakscomic).

4-What helps you find inspiration personally?

As much as it pains me to say, I’d have to say Instagram is the biggest source of inspiration for me. I’ve lost count of how many great artists (alive and dead) I’ve discovered on there and I keep finding more on an almost weekly basis. It can get overwhelming at times, but I make sure to save any noteworthy posts to a favourites list so I can reference them in future.
Aside from Instagram, the aforementioned YouTube instructional videos often have recommendations of other artists to check out and Pinterest can lead you down a rabbit hole of finding inspirational work.

5-If you could collaborate with any artist—dead or alive—who would it be and why?

I generally prefer to work alone, so I’m not sure how good I’d be at collaborating with someone! That said, I love the work of Richard Schmid, Craig Mullins, Pavel Shumov and Zhaoming Wu, to name but a few (I could list another 20 artists that I find inspiring but I’m trying to keep the list short!)

6-What's your favorite non-art-related thing to do that inadvertently helps your creativity?

I’ve always been a big video gamer and have a huge amount of respect for the work that goes into the creative side of this art form. There have been many occasions where I’ve discovered amazing artists who have worked on the concept art for some of my favourite games.

Music has also always been a big inspiration in my life. When I first started art college I actually wanted to be a full-time album cover designer. I grew up listening to a lot of rock and metal music (and still do!) and the cover art you’d find on many of these records was just great.

7-When did you discover digital art? How was your first ever experience with Procreate? What role plays Procreate in your everyday life?

Aside from the work I was doing whilst in art college (mostly using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop) I didn’t have any experience making digital art and had never used any kind of stylus to draw digitally.

I can’t recall exactly how I first heard about Procreate - I think maybe someone I work with had used it before and recommended it to me. Once I got the iPad, it was the first app I downloaded and was just blown away by how easy and intuitive it is to use along with the Apple Pencil. I’ve tried a couple of other drawing apps on the iPad but none are as easy and smooth to use in my experience.

These days, I find that I’m not very good at just sitting down in front of the TV and giving it my full attention, so I’ll usually have the iPad on my lap with Procreate open and will be working on something at the same time.

8-What is your favorite Procreate Manero brush set and why?

I downloaded the Thick Paint brush set just over a month ago and have been using it exclusively for the colour work I’ve been doing since. I’m still learning and experimenting with how I can incorporate all the different available brushes/textures in my work, which is great fun. I particularly love the Smooth Squared Brush and find myself using that for majority of my work.

I’ve tried a few different ‘paint’ style brush sets made by various people in the past, but this is the first one where I feel it really closely captures the look of traditional oil paint, which is my preferred style to work in.

9-Where can people check out your art?

At the moment, you can find my fine art style work on Instagram @paulgoodfield and my vintage comic book style work @twinpeakscomic.

I also have plans to launch an online store selling prints in the near future, so keep an eye out for any announcements!

👉 Check out Paul Goodfield's Instagram 👉 Check out the @Twinpeakscomic Instagram

Artist Spotlight is a place where I'm interviewing artists that I personally admire, who's art I find very inspiring, and that also happen to use Procreate and my brushes as part of their artistic routine. Watch this space for more interviews in the future, and make sure to check each artist's links to show your support!

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