Tags: artist | California | self-taught

After spending most of his twenties sleeping on the floor of his parents spare bedroom, this freelance visual designer and whiskey enthusiast received a boot-legged version of Photoshop 6.

Five years later and he hasn't looked back. Now buying his software legally and sleeping on his own bed, this self-taught high-school dropout has been building up a steady list of clients in the Southern California area, and has even done work for clients in Canada and Australia.

"I don't know how this all works. All I do is drink a bottle of whiskey, smoke a pack of cigs, blackout, and wake up and then I have some art in the morning. It's always a surprise to me..."

This cowboy living (bottle of whiskey and a pack-a-day lifestyle) artist was raised on comic books, B-movies, zombie flicks and anime/manga, and his influences range from Barry Windsor-Smith, Frank Miller, Joe Madureira, to Masamune Shirow and Katsuhiro Otomo.

He originally wanted to be a comic artist but found out he didn't have patience for panel-to-panel work. After studying so many artists and graphic designers, his main influence being Czech Art Nouveau legend Alphonse Mucha, he turned to portrait and abstract designing, with most of his works centering around his love of the female form.

As a teen he poured himself in to any Art Nouveau book or Playboy Magazine he could find, and studied every stroke and curve. To this day Mucha and women resonates the most throughout all of his work digitally and with his 2-D lineart.

In the past two years Warren has been drawing attention and adulation from local bands, models, and record companies, as well as causing a little bit of a stir on the internet on websites such as ModelMayhem.com and Myspace.com.

His hope is to land a big contract from one of the major companies such as Nike, Adidas, Vivid Entertainment or one of the many name-making brands, hoping to break into the Asian art market, but for the moment he is happily making art just for the hell of it his East County San Diego home.