According to his bio, illustrator Greg Swearingen’s career started in junior high school when he was commissioned to draw a dragon for one dollar. Since then, his commissions have picked up somewhat and include clients like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harcourt Brace, Harper Collins and Tor Books.
He credits his teachers at the Columbus College of Art, who included C.F. Payne and Joe Kovach, with helping him to forge his artistic direction. He lists some of his other favorite illustrators as Andrej Dugin and Olga Dugina, Jessie Wilcox Smith, and Peter McCarty.
Swearingen’s work has been featured in Communications Arts and the Spectrum collections of contemporary fantastic art as well as a number of Society of Illustrators exhibitions.
Unfortunately, the samples on his site are much too small to get a feeling for the actual appeal of his work, which is often in the wonderful textures he creates with his mixed media approach that combines acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil.
The galleries on the site of his rep at KIDshannon are a bit larger, but still frustratingly small. Look for his work in one of the recent Spectrum collections or, better yet, of course, in one the the actual books he has illustrated.
A painting for a dollar? That’s quite a low price for a quality work. But then big things always start with little ones. My brother has a collection of Random House books and dictionaries. If I’m not mistaken I’ve seen some of Greg’s artwork from there. One nice thing that really attracted me to it is the way how pictures are illustrated with perfect depth and volume. I 2D artwork looks more like a 3D one.