Mark Pajari, May Featured Artist
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I grew up in Milwaukee, where I discovered two and three-point perspective drawing while in grade school, drawing buildings and city street scenes. My passion for drawing continued in high school where I took pretty much every art class my school offered. I discovered watercolor, oils and acrylic, and started drawing cartoons and caricatures.
I went on to study graphic design and photography at Milwaukee Area Technical College. I joined the school newspaper as the graphics editor where I began drawing editorial cartoons and created my first comic strip.
My first job out of college took me in technical direction at Quad Graphics, where I was a digital photo retoucher and scanner operator. I learned all about color theory, digital photography and graphic reproduction in print. I also did many caricatures, designed t-shirts for corporate events and started my own comic strip, “Off Register,” in the corporate newspaper. At this point in my life, I aspired to be a nationally syndicated cartoonist (think Dilbert or Bloom County when newspapers were still a thing).
My career path led me to Chicago, to Madison, Wisconsin, to Southern California and, since 2022, the beautiful valley of the sun that we call home. My professional work has centered around managing art departments and digital imaging groups working with catalogs, magazines, and more recently e-commerce marketing companies. I still work full time as the Director of Premedia at Artisan Colour in North Scottsdale.
I put my pencils, paintbrushes and markers aside for a long time, focusing on photography as a nice little side business. I started doing headshots, family portraits, sporting events and weddings and still do that today.
Last year, my wife tried to lure me back into being creative again when she gave me a set of colored pencils as a birthday gift. I’m happy to say that her efforts have been successful. read more