Twen­ty-one-year-old Tim­o­thy Bootan de­scribes him­self as am­bi­tious and de­ter­mined. He is a new and up­com­ing artist, and ac­cord­ing to him, he has what it takes to bring his art to a whole new lev­el.

Cur­rent­ly at­tend­ing COSTAATT, pur­su­ing an as­so­ciate de­gree in Graph­ic De­sign, Bootan was on the brink of writ­ing his fi­nal se­mes­ter ex­ams when he de­cid­ed to take some time off to at­tend UWI Arts Club's Cre­ative Day Out where he pre­sent­ed some of his jaw drop­ping art pieces. Bootan has a very metic­u­lous artis­tic skill of mak­ing his sub­jects very re­al.

Al­so a new and up­com­ing an­i­ma­tor, this young­ster prides him­self in be­ing able to add some strik­ing hu­man qual­i­ties to some of the most pop­u­lar ani­me char­ac­ters. One such paint­ing is of Mat­sumu­to, a very volup­tuous and sul­try char­ac­ter of the pop­u­lar Bleach ani­me se­ries. "I see them re­al­is­ti­cal­ly. I try to en­vi­sion these char­ac­ters speak­ing. I think as if I had to cast them in a movie, how would they look?" This is how Bootan man­ages to draw these char­ac­ters re­al­is­ti­cal­ly; from his dri­ve to al­so be­come a di­rec­tor. In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, the artist does not take his in­spi­ra­tion from ani­me, but looks up to Leonar­do Da Vin­ci for his de­ter­mi­na­tion in cap­tur­ing a sub­ject as re­al­is­ti­cal­ly as pos­si­ble.

Tak­ing a quick glance at Bootan's col­lec­tion of art pieces, most are de­pic­tions of women. "I re­al­ly like the fe­male form. I could paint male char­ac­ters but it does not hold my at­ten­tion for very long, he told gieMAGAZINE. "I en­joy paint­ing the curves of women as well their lips; the male form is straight cut and I do not en­joy paint­ing it as much." Bootan fur­ther re­vealed that he once paint­ed his ex-girl­friend and re­called that she had loved it, for he was able to cap­ture her im­age very close­ly. Tim­o­thy al­so did a few paint­ings of his very good friend, Mariel­la Lesal­do. Mariel­la has been in­stru­men­tal in en­cour­ag­ing the young artist in all his artis­tic en­deav­ours. She al­so stands as his con­fi­dant in times when he seeks ad­vice on per­son­al mat­ters.

Be­ing a true artist, Bootan al­so took up the chal­lenge of draw­ing him­self. He did ad­mit, how­ev­er, that it was a dif­fi­cult task. He stud­ied his im­age in the mir­ror, and then re­drew him­self. "I have pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry", he told gieMAGAZINE, "but it's not that ex­pan­sive." How­ev­er, ter­rif­ic art is not Bootan's on­ly ac­com­plish­ment. It would be dif­fi­cult for one to be­lieve that this fit, well toned in­di­vid­ual who seems to be reg­u­lar­ly hit­ting the gym, clocked in at 220 pounds on the scale four years ago. The de­ter­mined Bootan, through a strict di­et and ex­er­cise lost 80 pounds in five months. To­day, he has ac­com­plished many of the com­mer­cial ex­er­cise pro­grammes that are seen on tele­vi­sion. Ex­er­cis­ing twice a day, sev­en days a week has now be­come a per­ma­nent part of his life.

This de­ter­mi­na­tion has al­lowed Bootan to al­ways think big, and see that any­thing is pos­si­ble.

He dis­closed to gieMAGAZINE that in five years from now he sees him­self giv­ing ideas to an­i­ma­tion stu­dios such as Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tions, lo­cal­ly, and on an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, Stu­dio Pier­rot. "I am aim­ing re­al­ly big", Bootan stat­ed con­fi­dent­ly. For youths who wish to get in­volved in art, Bootan in­sist­ed, "de­ter­mi­na­tion is key and pro­cras­ti­na­tion is your worst en­e­my". He then stressed that every­thing you do is art. "When the Greeks did pot­tery, they did not call it art, they called it an ex­pres­sion of them­selves. A song, a po­em and a draw­ing are all forms of self ex­pres­sion and should be in­clud­ed in what we term as art."

Sha­had Ali

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies