Artist Research: Craig Mullins

Mullins is an American illustrator born in 1964 in California. He was classically trained at the Pitzer College of Claremont, California (for two years) and moved to enter College of Design. He was introduced to digital art with the program Dubner Paintbox in 1987 and now created most of his work digitally using Corel Painter and Photoshop in his studio in Hawaii, where he currently lives. he is influenced by Frank Frazetta and John Singer Sargent whereI think most of his expressive brushwork originates. Mullins has worked as a concept artist for videogames like Halo, done book covers and film matte paintings for The Matrix Revolutions, Armageddon, Apollo 13, etc.
His digital style is heavily informed by his accomplished skills as a traditional oil and watercolor painting. He is a great reminder to me that you need traditional skills to inform your digital stuff or it just looks bland and very banal. Mullins digital paintings also retain a fresh sketchy quality and also achieves various textures without photographic overlays which is very desirable (I think he does it with a multitude of custom brushes).
His site