Last week’s Lego post, featuring the awesome Nathan Sawaya, was such a hit that I thought I’d try it out again.

Taj Mahal By Kevin Davis

Kevin Davis is an artist I’m fortunate enough to know personally, and I can tell you he’s a quirky and creative guy.  Going to Kevin’s house, you notice subtle things.  The perfect living room with the case of Nightmare Before Christmas Toys, the clean pool room with the giant thumb tack table.

These are the marks of an artist at play.  Kevin is wrapping up a project called Refrigeratorville, a flash cartoon about a mysterious virus that is rotting all of the food in the fridge at a rapid rate.  You can see the trailer for the project here.

Hit the jump to see the interview with Kevin and more of his amazing artwork!

First of all, thank you for letting me interview you.  It’s a great honor to be able to ask questions of someone who has so much talent and patience.

Could you tell us a bit about what inspired you to do some of these projects?

In general, I have to say I have selected popular images to reproduce as I was going for a pop art style.  The Etch itself is a pop icon.  Other stuff is just random ideas I had or commissioned work.

Describe some of the challenges you face when putting something like this together

The first obvious challenge is the inability to erase.  I can only think of a couple of times where I started over.  If I’m too deep into the drawing, I will just draw something else near by to distract the viewer.  Also, going from one part of the screen to the other is a challenge.  I do retrace almost every line at least onve, but I draw a frame around the outside of the drawing to go from place to place.

How long did your first etch a sketch art piece take for you to finish?

My first drawing only took about an hour.  In the beginning, I was very loose with my drawing.  Now a days I retrace closely to create cleaner lines.  The original “Last Supper” I drew took me 3 hours.  The more recent one I did has every item on the table and cleaner lines.  It took me 10 hours.  My older work is at the bottom of my image gallery.

What is your favorite piece and why?

I think my favorite piece is “Escher’s Stairs”.  Mostly for the angled lines and it helped me develope new techniques in my drawings.  It also gives me a sense of accomplishment as I had started it at one time and decided it was too difficult.

What other projects are you currently involved in?

I’m currently focused on changing my day job from auto claims adjuster into something more along the lines of graphic design or illustration.  I still do commissioned Etches every now and then, but look forward to doing them more on a regular basis.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.  You do great work Kevin, keep up the awesome!

—– BIO —–

This interview is brought to you by @Zombologist, also known as Richard Bashara.  Richard Bashara is a blogger for Comicimpact.com and Igeektrooper and hopes to bring his brand of awesome to every blog he touches.  He enjoys a good game of Left 4 Dead, bacon, macaroni and cheese and long walks on the beach.