"Never speak for your work; always let your work speak for itself."
Portrait of an Artist
Ray "Sketch" Gustafson
...
Ray Gustafson, a.k.a. "Sketch" to his friends, has been drawing since he was young. He never received any formal art training in his "formidable" years and it was not until later on when he attended college that he realized his potential.
While attending Dakota County Technical College, in Rosemount, MN, Sketch realized his knack for being able to pull, twist, and stretch a funny situation out of life's most mundane occurrences and put it into cartoon form. His cartooning ability was reinforced by his friends and family and he decided to go into the field of Computer Graphics and Animation after graduation. Sketch graduated at the top of his class, Student Senate President, with honors from Phi Theta Kappa, two years later.
Sketch was accepted to a school in Florida where he hoped to graduate from and move on to Disney Animation. Unfortunately, on the day he was to enroll he found out that he was financially unable to afford the tuition. After packing everything he owned into a truck and moving across the country to Florida, and not wanting to return back to Minnesota empty handed, he found a job at the Walt Disney World Resort in food service, then moved on to the character department, and finally landed in management. It was at Disney that Sketch met some very talented artists who taught him some valuable skills that he still practices to this day.
Upon moving back to River Falls, WI, Sketch met and married his wife Shannon and began to work not only as a assistant manager in a retail store but also volunteered his time to the River Falls Fire Dept until, in June of 2002, a serious back injury changed the course of his life forever.
Unable to work for several months, Sketch was forced to take a serious look at his life and the direction that it was heading - and not liking it - he and Shannon made the decision to follow what path God laid before them. It didn't take long for Sketch to find that he had been blessed with the ability to work with teenagers and not long after that decided to further his education in the training of counseling young adults.
After having several of his cartoons published in local papers, starting a greeting card business and being recognized nationaly by having his work published in several magazines, Sketch continues his speaking to young adults about the ability we all have about creative thinking and thinking "Outside The Lines," as he calls his lecture.
Today, after moving back to the River Falls area, he continues to create "Small Town Values" weekly cartoons and send them out in all forms of media.
Sketch and his wife Shannon
on their wedding day, February 2, 2002.