Artist Profile: Jake Ballesteros

Jake Ballesteros has worked with your favorite bands and you don't even know it. For almost a decade, the Austin-based artist has worked with the likes of Power Trip (Ballesteros has become de facto resident artist for the watershed thrash band), No Warning, and Iron Age. Over the last few years, Ballesteros' art has continued to grow and evolve along with the bands he works with. This is why a lot of bands feel so comfortable working with him over time. It is a special relationship when a band keeps referring to the same artist. It means that the artist is able to see what the band sees and is able to put those ideas to paper. If you're in a band and you've ever commissioned something, you know how frustrating it can be communicating your ideas to an artist. It can be even more frustrating trying to find an artist who encapsulates those ideas perfectly in a visual presentation. This is true with Joe Petagno and Motorhead, Antichrist Kramer and Inquisition, and few others. Ballesteros' biggest strength is the ability to take concepts and, through his vision, create illustrations that really evoke the necessary reactions from them.

Originally from the beach town of Corpus Christi, Texas, Ballesteros had made a home in Austin for the last decade. On his passion for art, Ballesteros comments, "art has been apart of my life since i could walk, all through out grade school i looked forward to art class, or drawing cartoon like renderings of my friends at lunch. my fascination with comics and cartoons was endless, I'm not the biggest reader unfortunately, never was, but the illustrations on book covers, and the graphic details of comics had me judging books by the cover for sure." His influences include Alphonse Mucha, Aubrey Bearsley, Brian Schroeder (more commonly known as Pushead), and Florian Bertmer. Ballesteros credits these artists with their "unique style and attention to detail challenge me to push the design, to add and add and add, cracks and hairs and folds blood splatter and drips."

Ballesteros is available for commission and can be contacted at drewaskullonce@gmail.com