I am Kevin Kia

I started drawing as a kid—my fingers dancing in the air each night before bed, tracing worlds only I could see. But I was told I was destined for medicine: “You’re too bright for art,” they said. Now, at 44, with two PhDs in the medical field, I’ve learned that each of us is born with a purpose, our Dharma, that quietly calls to us every day, urging us to take it out, polish it, and share it.

It took time and courage, but I finally listened. I am a seer by nature: I see things, feel their vibes, and transform those energies into art that lives on your walls. Every piece evokes something—Happiness, Peace, Serenity, or Solitude—and you feel it the moment you look.

Art is more than decoration; it’s a bridge between memory and emotion. When you bring one of these prints home, it’s not my story you’re seeing—it’s yours.

My Creative Process

Each Art Academi piece passes through three crafted stages: vision, technical construction, and emotional refinement. Below are the tools, workflows, and file standards I use as a professional digital artist.

1 — Vision & Imagination

I begin with exploratory sketches on a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet (pressure & tilt sensitive), so strokes breathe like graphite, ink, or oil. I assemble digital mood boards in Milanote or Adobe Bridge, mixing my photos, historic references, textures, and palettes defined in HEX/LAB/Pantone to stay accurate across screen and print.

2 — Digital Construction

I build canvases in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator at 300–600 dpi. In Photoshop I work with a custom brush library—charcoal for grain, round oil brushes at 50–80% opacity for painterly layering, watercolor brushes with flow & scatter for washes, and mixer brushes for atmospheric blending. Brush dynamics map to pen pressure & tilt so one stroke can taper, break, or pool pigment naturally.

I organize non-destructive layers—Background / Midground / Foreground—plus masks and adjustment stacks (Curves, Selective Color, Gradient Maps) using Multiply, Overlay, and Soft Light. For crisp structure and scale, I use Illustrator: Pen/Curvature tools with variable-width strokes and gradient meshes, then merge vector & raster back in Photoshop.

I may use Adobe Firefly for minor, technical tasks—testing a lighting scenario or generating a placeholder texture—never as the author of the artwork. The essence is hand-placed brushwork and compositional decisions.

3 — Final Polish & Authenticity

Finishing is where the piece breathes. I grade color with Curves/Selective Color, apply high-pass sharpening (1–3px soft-light) to targeted zones, and proof in Adobe RGB and sRGB. For print, I soft-proof and convert to CMYK (ISO Coated v2) if required. Masters are archived as TIFF (lossless) with layered PSDs; web previews export as optimized JPG/PNG with embedded metadata.

Hardware: Intel i9 / NVIDIA RTX / 64GB RAM workstation, calibrated 4K IPS monitor (X-Rite profiled), Wacom Intuos Pro, and redundant SSD/RAID backups. Tools don’t replace the artist—they extend the reach of the hand and safeguard the archive.

Inspiration

Imagination comes first. Every piece begins with an inner image—tone, light, and feeling I want to carry into the world. After that, I study artists of emotion and precision to deepen the language: J.M.W. Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Mark Rothko for light, movement, and color; and the naturalists and realists—Peder Mørk Mønsted, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jules Breton, Ivan Shishkin, and John William Waterhouse—for crystalline detail, disciplined drawing, and atmosphere as truth. The aim is to merge lyricism with fidelity in today’s digital medium.

Questions & Answers

Is your artwork computer-generated?

No! I create by hand on a digital canvas using Photoshop, Illustrator, and a Wacom tablet. A computer is part of my studio—like a camera or a press—not a substitute for authorship. I may use Adobe Firefly for minor technical tests (lighting/texture ideas), but the composition and brushwork are mine.

Why digital instead of traditional paint?

Tools evolve. Digital lets me combine painterly gesture with precise control, stay non-destructive, and deliver museum-grade masters for archival printing. The craft is the same: line, tone, color, and feeling.

How do you achieve the brush texture?

Custom Photoshop brushes mapped to pen pressure/tilt, layered at varied opacity/flow (30–80%), mixer brushes for blending, and controlled grain so edges feel natural—not plastic.

What makes your prints museum-quality?

High-resolution canvases (300–600 dpi), ICC-profiled color, archival matte papers, and pigment inks. Files are proofed in Adobe RGB/sRGB and converted to CMYK when required for faithful tone and longevity.

What hardware do you use?

Intel i9 + NVIDIA RTX workstation, 64GB RAM, calibrated 4K IPS display (X-Rite), Wacom Intuos Pro, and redundant SSD/RAID backups for the archive.

How long does a piece take?

From 10 hours to several weeks, depending on complexity—sketching, structure, layered painting, grading, soft-proofing, and print prep.

Who inspires your work?

Turner, Van Gogh, Monet, Rothko—alongside Mønsted, Gérôme, Breton, Shishkin, and Waterhouse—and the quiet fragments of daily life: seasons, weather, a remembered walk.