I go by Dagger / Daggerpoint in the vast World Wide Web.
I was born in the year of the tiger, in a small place situated inside one of 7,107 of my country’s islands.
I’m Filipino. Born and raised.
What’s behind the name Jeremy Farlow?
The name was derived during my college days. It is the name I gave to my vampire original character (spelled Jerremí). When I got to discover the world wide web, like every other person I wanted a site of my own. At first the site was simply to showcase my portfolio online, but I saw the potential for it to be something more. At first I used my own name to advertise myself, but the web being global, nobody could recall it as it is a very Filipino name. So, like Samuel Langhorne Clemens (see if you can recall that name), I chose the pen name Jeremy Farlow. Jeremy comes from a few resources, but mainly inspired from an Anne Rice book and a Pearl Jam song. Farlow is a play of words on the location on the map of my place of birth to the western world (far and low).
How long have you been drawing?
Every kid will pick up a writing/drawing instrument at a very early age. I guess once I started putting lines on paper, I never stopped drawing. I have been drawing semi-professionally for over three decades.
Have you taken any formal training in drawing/illustration/graphic design?
I’ve never had any formal training in drawing. All the techniques and skills I have, I’m proud to say, was and is still being acquired and honed through experimentation, observation, and by consuming books and online tutorials available on the net. I come from an average income family, so my parents could not afford to send me to any formal training in the arts growing up.
I am a graduate of the oldest University here in my homeland, with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. My major is Industrial Design, way different from what I truly love to do. College years did help hone my skills (light and shadows, color harmony, etc.) by way of basic anatomy and photography classes during my sophomore year.
Who are the artists that most influenced you?
Prominent in my style of drawing is Jim Lee, that is a given. But I have also been a student of different artists of different genres and fields. There’s the old masters Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Dega. Filipino komiks artists like Vincent Kua, Lan Medina, Larry Alcala. Japanese mangaka like Shirow Masamune, Masakazu Katsura, Katsushiro Otomo. Then there’s the western comic book artists Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Paul Neary, Alan Davis, Frank Miller, Jae Lee, Whilce Portacio, Mark Silvestri, Dale Keown (this list could go on forever) and again, Jim Lee. Pin-up greats George Petty and Alberto Vargas are a great influence to me growing up. During college I took an interest in airbrush art, so the works of Boris Vallejo, Olivia de Berardinis, HR Giger, Julie Bell.
What tools do you use/ have used?
The basics are always there; pencils and paper. I’m particularly fond of Faber Castell lead pencils, ranging from an H to an HB. I also have clutch pencils (Rotring and Staedtler), a regular gum and kneaded eraser, triangles, curves, straight rules. And you can’t go wrong with a good, sturdy, inclined drawing table and proper light.
Seeing as I’ve totally shifted to digital drawing, my WACOM Intuos3 A5 is my most valuable tool at the moment. I use various software to achieve certain areas of my work like digital inking in Corel Painter and the rest in Adobe Photoshop. My computer changes every chance I get, and I’m an OS X user.
At what size/resolution do you set your canvas to?
For commissioned poster images, usual setup of my canvas in Photoshop is 11 x 17 inch at 300ppi. For comic book sequential pages, I use the industry standard of 11 x 17 inch with a 10 x 15 inch active area at 150ppi.