That's what my father told me at our kitchen table when I was about out of high school and I had just informed him I was going to be a "rock star"!

Well as it turned out, my father had some incite and I had some wild dreams. That was in 1986.

I moved to L.A. soon after that and gave my dreams a shot. I did well in the rock-n-roll scene, but by some strange fortune I started painting album covers for some of the biggest rock bands in town. Every band from Motley Crue, W.A.S.P., L.A. Guns to Kix! This was pretty wild considering I had never had an art class in my life! Art just came kind-of naturally to me. I fell in love with the airbrush, then it was all over. Art was in my veins, and it was much more lucrative than singing in a band!

I worked for years doing my art for various record labels and rock clubs in L.A. I started

That was the best move I had ever made! While getting to really dive deep into art of all types, I also got to get back to the core of who I felt I really was! I met a lot of great artists there, but a big turning point was when I was introduced to one of my art heroes, Mark "Crash" McCreery, head designer at Stan Winston Special Effects Studios. He did all the designs for the dinosaurs in the motion pictures, "Jurassic Park" and " The Lost World: Jurassic Park II". Crash was, and still is a great inspiration to me, as a colleague and great friend.

Well that got me back to

I'm a great fan of nature and living things and their relationship with one another. I always look for this kind of relationship in my compositions in my paleo-illustration. I would recommend to anyone interested in doing paleo-art, really studying the anatomy and skeletal constructions of past and present animals. How muscles and bone work together. Study environments, faunas in all regions and areas. Most of all love and believe in what you are doing! Hey, people will believe in you, like my father does for me, if you believe in you!

Todd Marshall