Hi everyone!

First let me introduce myself, my name is Keith Rhodes and I am a proud British subject, I am 44 (2003) years of age although I feel 21 most of the time (all men are little boys inside), I was born (1959) in England in County Cleveland in a little town called Thornaby-on-tees, I am married (just recently) to a beautiful Filipino (2003) whom I adore and love so very much, sorry ladies I’m taken he he. We are expecting our first child some time in September and yes! I’m a little excited, now I have a good excuse to go and watch all those great kiddy movies without feeling embarrassed ha ha.

My wife is the greatest web designer I have ever had the privilege to know, she can have a web site up and running in such a short time, and the quality of her work is exemplary, I could never get the right feel for my own site, she did it in just a couple of days, don’t get me wrong! She worked day and night until it was finished, you see when she starts a project she will dedicate all her expertise until it is finished, I have lost my wife to work many times in the years I have known her (thanks nina.ng), but I know I have got to be one of the luckiest men alive, I got to marry (eventually) the woman of my dreams.

How it all began

I started doing art when I was about 5 (1964) years old, at first with pencil then coloured crayons and then onto charcoal. I started by copying cartoons from the `Donald and Mickey` comic, then at the age of seven I became fascinated by dinosaurs, I would sit in the wash-house by the back door all alone doing sketches of T-rex And Diplodocus not to mention proterceratops; these hours and hours of doodling advanced my artistic skills tremendously.

I was an active member in the Salvation Army from being so little (can’t remember that far back) till I was seventeen years of age, it was in this period I learned to read music and play the Tenor Horn and to sing with a high squeaky voice. Later on in life I learned to play the saxophone, clarinet, flute, piccolo. I drew many pictures in this period of my life for the Salvation Army that would coincide with the sermon of the day (Sundays). Then when I started school I would be sitting at the back of the class drawing spider man and other great Marvel heroes. As I progressed in my youth I realized that I had a talent that not many other kids possessed.

So what happened?

When secondary school came along at the age of 12 (1971), I was into some weird sketches, I had began to find my own way and my own style at an early age. My idol in the world of art has to be Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazeta. Their styles really hooked me into the world of dragons and weird monsters. To this very day I am most comfortable drawing weird creatures, and designing web pages.

In 1975 at the tender age of sixteen I did the worst thing possible! As far as my artistic career was concerned, I joined the Army for adventure and my artwork took a back seat for some years if not decades. To this very day I regret this decision. You see, when I was fifteen, I was offered the opportunity to work for the Daily Mail in Scotland as a cartoonist. I only wish to this day that I had taken that opportunity, I shall always be wondering “what if”.

I was an unhappy man most of my years serving in the armed forces, it wasn’t till the last three years of service after already serving nine, that I really began to enjoy my time in the armed forces serving queen and country. The one thing I learned in the armed forces, was that it was only for those who had a fantastic ability to excel in learning to be a Zombie, yes I was a Zombie for 12 years “Oh God”.

Technology takes over

After leaving the armed forces (1989) I got my first taste of freedom, I had never had freedom in my previous 35 years, I was always under the control of some one or some thing, until I was sixteen I was under the control of my parents, and from the age of sixteen till the age of thirty, I was under the control of the armed forces learning not to use my own initiatives, so here I am after nearly fourteen years where my artistic ability had been thrown into the closet to decay, the only difference now was that I was working with computers.

My first computer was a Vic 20, then came along the first computer to ever be able to do any real artwork was the Amiga 500 (1986 or there abouts), this machine was capable of 256 colours “wow” well! In them days that was fantastic, the poor PC could only manage two colours green and black “ho wow”. The Atari ST was around at this time, also doing great things with colour just before the Amiga 1200 came out. Now this is the machine that really started all the great computer art that you see around today, the Amiga 1200. In-fact there are still great pieces flying around the computer scene that originated on the Amiga 1200 even today (2003).

Comptech is born

1990 is the year that I and a close friend formed COMPTECH. The close friend I am talking about is Mr Frederick Franklin; this gentleman was at first my teacher during a graphics course that I enrolled in at Hartlepool. He believed in the old ways and always thought at the time that computers would never really take over as a GFX medium. I was the one to convert his way of thinking. One day I brought my trusty Amiga 1200 to the enrolled GFX course and from then on we have never looked back.

Well, this is where I am going to leave this little story and some day I will fill in the details with more indebt details. The story you have just read are just the basics, many other events have taken place and I believe there is an awful lot more to come. So keep on coming back and you may just see the full story, until then... all the very best, don’t forget to leave some comments before you leave my site.

Bye bye :O)