3DTotal: You have quite a comprehensive client list on your website. How difficult has it been to establish yourself and what have been the main challenges that you have had to overcome in the process?
Tomasz: That list is not even a half of them all, just those regular projects I’ve been doing. Which is the result of the fact that I love my work and I am very easily persuaded to take on a project, so every time someone calls or emails me I mostly say, “Sure, I’m in.” So most of time I’m working on two or three projects simultaneously. I had to cut some of these habits down recently because of my new duties as a husband and father, but I still work almost all the time. So a desperate, constant need of free time is still one of my biggest challenges; sometimes I think about cloning myself! [Laughs]. I haven’t had to seek new jobs for a few years; don’t ask me to explain why, it just happened. Even now, as I am writing, I already have a new job assignment which is pretty sweet. A few years ago I had to do some test jobs to prove my quality but now my portfolio is big enough to include every kind of subject matter and a style, because I’ve been doing things like a horror RPG and WB-like cartoon almost at the same time.

3DTotal: Artist often begin to slowly specialise in a particular style or subject matter. Do you feel it is important to remain versatile or do you hope one day to be able to concentrate on a specific genre?
Tomasz: I’m going to use some medical comparisons to answer this one: imagine a doctor, surgeon and a dentist. These guys might be masters in their separate fields, but all have had to finish medical university right? The same can be said about artists. I can be a master at painting knights or naked chicks, while another artist can be a brilliant monster designer, but we both need to have some kind of technical background or basic skills. Imagine what would happen if that surgeon has mastered stitching skin, but had skipped his anatomy lessons and couldn’t really tell the difference between a kidney and a liver... sound like a disaster? It is the same in our industry; I don’t care if an artist concentrates on one particular subject which he likes if I can tell he has some basic skill and knowledge in that matter, otherwise he must paint something different. I’m just tired of “artists” who paint only fairies or girls - or even worse, those who paint the same person over and over again - is this a kind of obsession or just a lack of any other models? In short: if you are a complete artist it should be no problem to jump from subject to subject, your favourite one aside. If you are only concerned with one subject, and worse still, if you cannot do anything else apart from that, then you have real problem. Anyway, it would be just b-o-r-i-n-g if I had to (or could) paint only one subject, no matter how perfect it was.

3DTotal: What do you feel has been the biggest learning curve during your career as a digital painter?
Tomasz: First would be the way I treat Photoshop. Once it was just a tool, which used to disappoint me or simply broke. But now PS is the biggest friend in my work; we understand each other and I don’t need any other tool to finish a job. And I’m only using CS because I still can’t afford CS3, I wonder what surprises await me there? But being serious for a moment, PS has a lot of great aspects that have allowed me to speed up my work, keep clean and ordered layers and brushes, and get my work up to a new level of quality.

3DTotal: Secondly I have discovered the gallery of Craig Mullins, whose work shows in his own perfect way what digital painting is (or should) be all about.
You mention Craig Mullins there, who of course is regarded as somewhat of a pioneer in his field, but what exactly do you mean when you say his work shows,” what digital painting is (or should) be all about”?
Tomasz: As you said “digital painting” is supposed to be a new kind of discipline in art, similar to a jump from painting on cave walls to painting on a canvas with oils. Making digital painting look like “real” painting is easy; we have tools now that we can simulate most styles so closely that nobody can tell if it is oil or digital. Now Craig has pushed these tools beyond that and actually made that jump. His works are so digital that you cannot possibly copy that style with any traditional media. I don’t know if he is any sort of pioneer, but I definitely saw that style for the first time in his work and it was like a bright light at the end of a tunnel, pointing me in the right direction – here was the correct definition of what a “digital painting was supposed to be. So it is no longer pretending anymore, like, “We are using oils but in a computer with a digital pen which actually simulates a real brush”. It is now a straight message: ”This is a new tool to create art - it is digital and that’s how it looks”.