"Never speak for your work; always let your work speak for itself."
Portrait of an Artist
Ray "Sketch" Gustafson
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Ray Gustafson, a.k.a. "Sketch" to his family and friends, has been drawing since he was very 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, life does throw a few curve balls every now and then and 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 rededicated their lives to God and made the decision to follow what path God laid before them. It didn't take long for Sketch to find that God had blessed him with the ability to minister to teenagers and not long after that decided to further his education in the gospel by attending The Institute for Teen Evangelism in Lakeland, MN.
Together, with God's blessing, he and his wife continually push his creative talents in new directions. The kids in the different clubs are a great source for comic material," Sketch says, "but I think I also have to mix a small piece of myself in as well. I think that's what makes them believable."
Sketch and his wife Shannon on their wedding day, February 2, 2002.
See Sketch's portfolio here.