For as long as he can remember, Steve Gervais has always wanted to be an artist.
Like most artists, his love of creating has taken him on a journey through life that has seen him embark on a wide variety of ventures, from co-founding a comic brand, to creating e-learning programs for companies such as Calgary Transit and Suncor, to fan and spray paint art, graphic design, and animation.
But, for a period of time it looked like he wouldn’t follow his goal at all.
“If it wasn’t for my father, I would have never gone down this line,” the 39-year-old Gervais said. “He was in the army, and I was going to do the same thing when I was 22, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and was working a dead-end job.
“My dad found out and said, ‘no, I want you to go to school, become an artist and do what you love. I don’t want you to live the life I did,’”
Since then, he’s been constantly chasing his dream yet despite all his experiences, he still feels he’s constantly learning.
“I started out wanting to be an animator,” he said. “I originally went to the Alberta College of Art and Design where I did two years learning paint, drawing, history and a lot of other things.
“But, they stopped doing animation, so I ended up going to the Applied Multimedia Training Centre in Calgary (which is no longer there).”
Once out of college, Gervais ended up working in television as a graphic designer. Later, an old friend came up with the idea of starting their own comic brand (Vicious Ambitious), which put out five anthologies before disbanding.
Around this time, Gervais got another diploma from New Media Campus in Calgary where he worked under Steve Rabatich, who has previously done work with Pixar Studios on Toy Story.
“I’ve looked on people like him as influences, he’s old school and all about animation on paper and pen,” Gervais said. “But, unfortunately at the time and still now there isn’t really any animation business in the city, so a lot of people like myself moved more into graphical stuff.”
Gervais also started going to the Calgary Comic Expo and since then has only missed one year.
“I ended up doing fan art and going to different shows, because I wanted to see what it was like being a fan again,” he said. “I sell art prints which is a hard business to get into because quite a few fans pursue it. For myself, I’m still trying to find my voice.”
A year ago, for his 10th wedding anniversary, he and his wife went to Las Vegas where he encountered spray paint art for the first time, from that point on, he was hooked.
“I was blown away, it really opened my eyes,” he admitted. “It’s something different you don’t see at a lot of shows.”
Since then, that form of art has been Gervais’ main form of expression well still selling prints (mainly of comic book art).
“It’s definitely been the big thing for me lately,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of people like it.”
Gervais says he’s currently leaning toward doing spray paints and a combination his hand-drawn work along with his computer graphics and stencils.
“People have had a real positive attitude toward my work and after doing so much digital art for so many years, this makes me feel like a real artist again.”
For information Gervais and his art, you can visit his sites: www.sgervais.wix.com/sgervaisillustration and www.facebook/com/sgervaisillustration.
