Royce B. McClure was born in Tokoroa, New Zealand in 1956. He has been a diving and tropical fish enthusiast since the age of 12. Royce has been painting full time since 1975. 
In 1977 he moved to Australia where he took
up the airbrush and became a
commercial illustrator. In 1981 he moved to Los Angeles
and continued illustrating until returning to
fine art in 1986.In a field where it is hard to tell one artists' work from another, Royce's images stand alone with their bold abstract designs and unique color schemes. Recently returning to New Zealand with his wife and four children, Royce now paints at his home-studio in the seaside town of Mt. Maunganui.
Notes on the Artists Technique: Most of the images on the RoyceArt site were painted with an airbrush. A few of them such as the `Eagle Head, `Family Reunion, and `Jurassic Junkie' were brush painted in acrylic. Royce uses mostly Iwata HP-SB airbrushes: Three or four are plugged into a compressor at the same time sharing about 10 color cups. Most art is done on Letramax 4000 board with Holbein Aeroflash transparent liquid acrylics and Liquitex acrylics. Masks are either .003 ml frosted acetate or .001 ml acetate frisket. The computer is being used more and more by Royce lately. Not to completely paint images but to quickly modify or reprocess an image for an alternative use. For example the Dolphin Pod design was done with the airbrush for a T-shirt, the image was then scanned into Photoshop and re-arranged to fit a side-ways format for a coffee cup: (Pod Mug). Then the individual dolphins were re-arranged again along with some dolphins from the Dolphin Flow image. Photoshop was used to put in some new backgrounds and the result was the set of coasters as seen in Gallery 6 and also the Dolphin wallpaper.
The advantage of using the computer over an air brush is its speed and
versatility. It is also easier to fix mistakes so requires less
concentration. It is, however, harder on the Artist's eyes and
doesn't result in an actual physical original piece of art. Because
of this, Royce's future work will mostly remain airbrush art with
computer modifications as needed.  |