Jay Berkovitch is an LA-based illustrator and character designer, with a passion and love for comics and graphic novels. As a queer artist, they input much of queerness into their work, telling queer stories and sharing queer narratives - positive and negative, but all real. With a love for many genres, they are a flexible storyteller that is passionate about the worlds they build. They love the unconventional, the out-there, and that which is less talked about. They are also a great lover of creature design and creating unique and fun alien and monster designs. And, above all else, they love birds.

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I work mostly with bright colors, character designs, and storytelling. Most of my process starts off digital, with sketches and rendering all done in the same program. I use mostly Medibang Paint Pro and FireAlpaca, sister programs that have similar but slightly different use-cases. Sometimes, when sketching digitally is difficult, I will sketch traditionally, then transfer the sketch over to digital to work over top - traditional sketching comes easier to me. I then either refine the sketch digitally, or jump straight into lineart, and then into color, and finally into rendering and shading. While I sketch frequently in a traditional sketchbook, I find myself less willing to color traditionally, and thus sometimes render traditional sketches or inks in digital. I enjoy a traditional ink sometimes, and will frequently do a hybrid traditional-digital piece in that style, working off my strengths and covering my weaknesses.

Artist Statement Regarding The Hamartia's Irony:

I employed many of my standard techniques for my Art 429 semester project, The Hamartia's Irony - a 24 page (+ cover) comic featuring one chapter of one of my stories. There, I used traditionally-sketched thumbnails to base my story off of, write down my dialogue, and ported my sketches to Medibang to render the sketch and begin the actual work. I reference my sketches heavily while drawing, and learn what works and what does not work while refining the sketches. Writing the dialogue for my characters was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed working on this project a lot, despite the sheer amount of work I set out to do. I think my skills as a storyteller shine through in my pieces, and I hope to garner that interest once I get my comics out into the professional spheres.