About

my name is santino nava.



"i'm currently living with my wife eden and our three dogs gnocchi, porter and porcini (no kids!), in the city of destiny tacoma wa. i've been doing art since i can remember. i have some sketch books from before i could even write, not really with anything any good...just saying i've been drawing for a long time, ha! i've got some artist poeple in my fam, my dad and my grandmother were both into art in some form. i've taken afew drawing classes as a kid, took lots of art classes through out school (tony tomao & mr. V & this asian guy 'shortie' the best tagger style i've seen, they taught me a lot) and figure drawing & photography at the local community college (from this crazy mini latino moses guy).

i got into airbrushing in jr. high school...practicing and practicing...wow, it was tough. i remember seeing someone with their jeans airbrushed (boy i'm old) and i had never seen anything like that...i wanted to get good enough to do that. i started out working on t-shirts...i had afew books, but they all were for illustrators using frisket. and for some reason i never wanted to do that style...i tried afew times, but a line that sharp to me looks fake, and it takes a really long time to cut it all out. so i never used it again, and instead did everything free hand. my first portait t-shirt was snoop dogg...haaa, then coolio...ha...both pretty bad. the first good one was john lennon. i used black, grays and white...all opaque, so it wasn't so easy to blend the colors. this image was also my first canvas i airbrushed. i went to a three day airbrush get-away (sounds fun right!) with the financial help from my bro. and that changed everything....huge difference...using real high quality airbrushes...quality canvas...and ....transparent paints! after that my paintings really improved...to look like a photograph.(i was in h.s. at this time)

from then on i continued to paint canvases with airbrush...tried alittle oil painting, i really want to get into that. took some breaks off and on...but always started up again.

i've also been drawing and sketching through out the years, always really enjoyed doing that.
designing tattoos...and doing oil painting is where i would like to focus my attention. it's time to put the airbrush away."

(exerpt taken from WHO IS HE....SN-Senor Nieve #1 on the TACOMA best sellers list, my made up list)

HUG IT OUT BBIITTCCHH!