Jeff Hoppis
ARTIST
Welcome to my site! I am Jeff Hoppis, a happy guy and a serious artist. I was born in the West and had an idyllic childhood. I was raised on a small farm in Eastern Washington State. Living on a farm with cattle, horses, BB guns and 3 creeks, we played Cowboys and Indians...a lot. I loved to travel the creek fishing with my pet skunk Rascal, and building tree forts and grass teepees. I painted and sketched all throughout my childhood, mostly Cowboys and Indians. After high school, I toured with a rock and roll band as their lead singer, all the while doing what I loved most, artwork. After touring the United states and Canada for several years I left the band and started working as an artist for a photography studio. I worked my way to the top of my field and gained national notoriety. I won multiple national awards in photo retouching, including: Best Black and White Restoration, Best Color Print Enhancement, The Fuji Masterpiece Award for Artist of the Year in Western States Photo Enhancement, as well as Artist of the Year for three consecutive years in Washington State, in the days when photograph enhancement was done by hand, not on a computer or IPhone. After a decade in this specialized field, I went to work for the movie industry enhancing and colorizing video box covers for MGM, movie posters for Paramount Pictures, and a few album covers. I worked on the backgrounds and clothing for the covers , colorizing and blending the pictures which were the result of many negatives spliced together to make a final image. That is when my skill level advanced greatly, creating fine detail with an airbrush to colorize the black and white images. After years in this field I left to become a fine art artist creating beautiful pieces in multiple subject areas and showing in galleries. I have always had a deep interest in the American Cowboy and Native American cultures, I lived it. Their faces show everything, their pride, their fierceness, their strife and struggles, all portrayed in images with deep emotion, movement, and color. I strive to capture emotion and realism using the nearly forgotten art form of airbrush, my personally developed techniques, and an Old Master style including painting first in black and white undercoating and then colorizing. The new Americana Art Movement has inspired many of the pieces you will see on my site, but I have painted numerous subject matters over the years, I can paint anything...and still love to sing with my band.