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Ralf Broemer |
Ralf works in Adobe Photoshop, Freehand MX, and Cinema 4D, as well as airbrush, watercolour, pastel, pencil and pen & ink. |
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072 139 7906 |
info@sparx.co.za | 021 422 0283 |
I was born in Germany, but grew up in Namibia, arriving there at age 5. After completing school and the compulsory National service there, I enrolled at Pretoria Technicon, to study Graphic Design. At first I found employment in the Signage and exhibition sectors.
Although Drawing/Illustrating since childhood, my Illustration career only started after joining a packaging Design studio in Johannesburg, (Objective Graphic Communications), which I've been with for 15 years. At first though, I was employed as a Graphic Designer. Seeing that every packaging project contained illustrations which were outsourced, I knew that I'd be able to do these better than what we where getting, so I suggested to the Studio to try my hand at the illustration work, and it took off from there. My Employer, who was an Artist and a Technical Packaging Specialist, became my mentor. My first lesson was that its not just about Illustrating a pretty picture, but about understanding how it will be reproduced, and preparing the art for the specified printing process, depending on the substrate. Those days I worked with pen and ink, Markers for presentations, Watercolour and Airbrush, which was my favourite at the time, but only really suited to Gravure printing then.
It took me a while getting over the digital divide, much to the bemusement of the Designers, as they had no problem with the change over. I started practicing after hours, after much encouragement from my colleagues, around the time of Photoshop 5.5. The change then came quite swiftly, as the benefits where evident. At first I did the presentation drawings only, leaving the markers behind, but after buying a stylus pen and tablet, I started doing the final artwork on computer. My computer skills are completely self taught. Accounts that I Illustrated for during my time at OGC were Cadburys, National Brands, Tiger Brands, Masterfoods, Mars, Carnival foods, Take 5, Pick & Pay and Sakkor, Omnia, to name a few.
Other than Illustration, I've also expanded into 3D Rendering, Desktop Photography, Photo retouching, and Finished Art, which has become a sizable part of my work flow today. My speciality remains Illustration though, Vector Illustration in Freehand and Illustrator, and for full colour continuous tone (Raster), I use Adobe Photoshop. My favourite is super realism, but as a Commercial Illustrator I work in any style required.
I left OGC in 2005, but have retained them as a very good regular client. It was the right time to go on my own, as my Freelance commissions started increasing. Also illustration work in the FMCG industry was not really growing, one tended to Illustrate similar things over and over again, like fruits, and little cute characters., oh..and the "big five"!!! Not that I mind, its all welcome work, but its been great to expand to a broader scope of illustration like Medical, print Ad media, magazine covers, Architecture and web sites.