Rodney Pike is a 49-year-old artist from Louisiana who discovered his passion for art at a young age by copying cartoons. He became obsessed with Norman Rockwell's paintings and spent much of his youth practicing different art forms. Pike had no formal art training except for one influential art teacher and some web design classes. He stepped away from art for 25 years to raise his family but recently rediscovered his passion through photo manipulation contests and caricatures using Photoshop. Since then, he has devoted himself to learning these new art forms, producing over 300 photo manipulations and teaching himself caricature illustration.

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2. My name is Rodney Pike, but many in the art world know me as rwpike, which is
my username at many web sites. I am 49 years old, born and raised I Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, which is close to New Orleans. I now live in Gonzales,
Louisiana, which is still very close to where I grew up. I have been married to my
wife Lydia for 12 years now and between the two of us have 5 children. As a child,
I admired my older brother’s ability to draw cartoons and I set out at a very young
age to one day be as good as him.
Mad magazine was a big influence on me at that time and I practiced for hours on
end copying caricatures and cartoons. At about age 10, I discovered Norman
Rockwell and it changed my life. I fell in love with his work and story telling ability
in his paintings. I developed a passion for art which consumed me, so I spent
most of my youth locked in my room sketching, painting, sculpting, wood
carving; you name it and I did it. I had an insatiable appetite for art and worked
hard at my craft but it always seemed there was something missing. I wouldn’t
discover what that was until many years later. I have no formal training in any
medium.
What I have learned has come from studying many artists over the years and from
shear desire. I had one unforgettable art teacher in junior high school who had a
huge influence on my art and my life but that was really it except for suite of web
design classes I attended at LSU at age 38.

3. My art had taken a back seat to raising children and supporting a family. I put my
art aside for about 25 years and over those years lost my passion for creating art.
It wasn’t until very recently that my passion and desire for creating art was
rekindled.
In April of 2010, I entered my first Photoshop contest at Freaking News. I had
finally found my niche. Photoshop and photo manipulation was the medium that I
had been searching for all my life. Since that day, my art has consumed me once
again.
I have been working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week since then studying other
artists like Max Sauco and doing photo manipulation in Photoshop. I have done
over 300 manipulations for Freaking News alone. In May of 2010 I discovered
Sebastian Kruger and Jason Seiler and made my first caricature attempt. That
started something totally new to me. Photo manipulated caricatures and
illustration. For 9 months now, I have devoted all of my time towards learning the
art of caricature manipulation.