Kent Reppert II

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Kent Reppert II began drawing “as soon as I was able to pick up a pencil.” He became the epitome of the home schooled artist; he was both the teacher and the student. His fascination with the comic and the horrific began early, when as a child he would copy cartoons from the comic section of the newspaper and the monsters from horror films in the movie section.

“In school I spent my classes drawing.” He says. When asked to do a book report Kent would instead turn in a graphic novel version of the story. He was also a fan of Tex Avery cartoons and the endless battles between Droopy and the wolf and cats and dogs, a conflict that later became a theme of his work.

“My dad was very supportive of me and my interest in art. When I was seven he introduced me to Frank Frazetta’s work. After that, fantasy art became an obsession.” Not surprisingly, Heavy Metal magazine and the subsequent movie became a major influence as well. “Just for their fantasy cover art I would buy record albums I never played and books I never read.”

“I’ve always been very much into detail and realism so I spent a many hours researching how to make things look real by learning how light reflects and how shadows dance.”

Reppert became an expert on a lifestyle that was over long before his time because Philadelphia was caught in a time warp. Doo wop singing, jeans and slicked-back hair continued to be popular among teenagers there long after the fifties were gone. “I’ve always been big into ‘50’s style along with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Sun Records; Happy Days and the Fonz, Hot rods, and movies like The Wanderers all appealed to me.”

When Kent was nine, the family moved to California where he was exposed to different life and music styles, notably Brian Setzer’s band, rockabilly and retro hot rods. The latter is a reactionary style of hot rod right out of the ‘40s, painted in black primer instead of gaudy expensive paint schemes.

“Music, particularly rockabilly, gave me a new point of view on freedom and creativity. Learning to play the guitar taught me to appreciate other types of music and the history of music, particularly the lifestyle and culture of rockabilly. I’m always researching history and the past to bring a style to the art.”

“I had worked in a lot of different media; acrylic, oil, and water color, but I found out by using Photoshop that digital art gave me the freedom to do things in a different way with more colors and best of all, more flexibility. I got a job doing technical illustrations while I was still in high school, and that gave me a lot of practical Photoshop experience.”

“Working digitally I can make all the revisions I want and get just the colors I want.” Because of the crisp digital images, the realism of Reppert’s often-bizarre world of dogs, cats, bulls and other creatures racing through the night in highly detailed retro rods and chopper motorcycles have a reality all their own.

Even though he works in the digital realm, he begins each piece the old fashion way: sketching in pencil. “I usually start by sketching a character and always start with the eyes because that is the soul of the character that creates the mood and tells me what the character is up to. It all starts to create a world that defines the being and tension or fun of it. That’s when the character starts to live on it’s own.”