By Ted Smykal

I started in Phoenix in the 1950s where I managed to avoid gypsies and the aristocracy and was raised by a normalish family. My mother was an artist and art teacher so I caught the bug from her. By the start of the 70s I ended up on Cape Cod where I finished my time in public education at Barnstable High which was an unremarkable school with a remarkable art department.

With the help and support of family, teachers, and friends I followed that with four years at Swain School of Design with a BFA in painting, a love of art, and profound ambivalence about the mechanics of selling art.

After college I futzed about on the Cape and then Boston for a decade painting canvases for storage and many houses for money. A recession saved me from house painting and sent me into painting flowers on clothing for a chain of boutique stores called Frillz. Eventually Frillz got seized for back taxes. That finally pushed me into freelance illustration which transitioned after a little nepotism into an eight year gig with Hatmaker doing concept illustrations and storyboards for television. After the dot-com bubble popping ended Hatmaker I did a bit more freelance before getting picked up by Pearson Education where I’ve been doing text book illustration and animation for the past eleven years.

I’ve always used history, fantasy, and science fiction in my personal art so steampunk was an easy sell for me. I’ve been doing it before it was called steampunk.