Don’t compromise. Don’t worry about it or what anyone else thinks. Find your own path and explore. The possibilities are endless.

...Always been' the creative-obsessive type.

I guess you could say I was always the creative-obsessive type. One with many interests indeed.  From the young years growing up in Ventura, CA, I had always found something interesting to get into. I found a world of love in kicking around the local fields and river bottoms, finding old railroad ties,  being a rock-hound, catching and examining bugs and local wildlife, to building tree forts & houses with the reclaimed wood from the local field dump piles (a lot like my fathers early years). I was always an outdoor person tied to the tangible things I could find and explore around the 2 mile radius of my somewhat suburban backyard. Around that time I'm sure I had raised (or taken in by parental coercion) many animals over those younger years.

Weather it be raising ducks, catching lizards, frogs, taking in stray dogs for a day or two and owning a few pets of my own, you could say I had an early life of colorful animal husbandry. At one point I had even acquired not only serious interest and knowledge in fish-keeping and aquatic filtration systems, but kept and raised an amazing little reef tank alongside other many freshwater tanks over my early teenage years. Don't get me wrong, a ton of lunch money and pay from my early-morning paper route job was saved to keep such obsessive luxuries afloat!  Then came drums. That's another completely separate story in itself. 

I was exceptionally interested in music and the arts and spent most of my teenage years drawing, writing and drumming for bands to express ideas that were trapped up waiting to find a voice. Maybe that's why you see me incorporating so many ideas, interests, collages and wild color explorations in my art from my own experiences throughout my life.

Sometimes random errors make interestingly beautiful things.

As a commercial digital artist for over 15+ years, Jonathan has focused his body of work in Multimedia/Web/Graphic/Print and Brand Design.

My works are a mixture and marriage of the all the mediums that I love. Blending the traditional technique where I’m mixing my own colors combining airbrushing and paint strokes capturing them digitally. Sometimes I will take a print and put that on canvas and layer it with random brushstrokes then reuse that random style in a digital medium. This makes for some extremely interesting mixtures and compositions. The coolest things come out that even I didn’t expect. My deigns combined photography, custom Photoshop brush design blending and implementing traditional painting, pop-art, mixed media and street art mediums that are transformed to create colorful, wild and vivid collage-style expressions.

Jonathan has begun to actively compete in national art competitions which include a 2nd place win in the 2011 Ventura County Fair's Professional Arts Dept Design Competition (Digital Arts Division) as well as 1 of 3 runners up in the Chicago Fringe Festival Logo Design Contest / Art Takes Times Square 2012 live art showcase & Book / RAW Ventura's 2012 & 2013 "Visual Artist of the Year" Award.  

100% Authentically Creative.

II -make-a da fun things I like. If you like, grab a print at the shop! Helps me fund my creative buzz.

Live by these words.

Don’t compromise. Don’t worry about it or what anyone else thinks. Find your own path and explore. The possibilities are endless.
 

Darkline Ink was also formed in 2008 and realised online in early 2010 as his virtual design company as well as housing a community of featured artists alongside providing a design community of other like-minded artists including design blogs, tutorials, featured artists and his design portfolio.

Something to be inspired by.

Microcosms. Asymmetry. My wife Brianna and my neurotically excitable pooch Darla "Peanut" Blackburn. Things that push the boundaries in what the art world wants to pigeonhole or categorize. Wild and exotic things, Vivid Color & Expression. Music. Laughter. That perfect dusk atmosphere right before the sun will set. The Avant Garde. I enjoy rule-breaking the conventional art barriers. Don’t compromise. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks you should be. Find your own path and explore. The possibilities are endless.

Excerpt from VC Reporter - Art Throb Article
By Claudia Pardo 10/04/2012

Heeere’s Jonny!

A Ventura native, Jonny Blackburn is an up-and-coming artist whose vibrant, pop-inspired works are making the scene around town. Most artists’ first creative memories may be drawing on the wall (and getting grounded for it) or finger painting in school. Blackburn’s introduction to art was permission to use his grandfather’s — who was the technical director of range operations for missiles in Point Mugu — Microsoft Paint software on his personal computer. The impact of this experience is very much present in his work today. In a time when everything has gone digital, artists want to find a fit in the art world. Am I a fine artist? Am I a commercial artist? What’s mixed media? Blackburn fits snugly in this gray area. Rather than get pigeonholed into one category, he wants to transcend boundaries. His rule-breaking, attractive works combine graphics, photography, Photoshop brush design, street art and painting. When he’s not creating art, Blackburn is making toys. Don’t let this paint the wrong picture. Blackburn works long and demanding hours designing and developing the packaging for international toys. “I translate abstract ideas into concrete imagery that sells a product, he says. “The challenge is to find the wow factor.” Needless to say, he gets great inspiration from his day at work, and applies it to his studio time.