My name is Lon Ryden, and this is what I have to say about myself:

I was born a sickly, asthma and allergy ridden child in a suburb of St. Paul Minnesota in the year 1971.  Most of my early memories are of hospitals, allergy tests, adrenaline shots, pneumonia and bronchitis.  This miserable life bestowed all sorts of unlikely "advantages" on me.  I learned to read at quite an early age and I developed art skills very quickly.  This, since I really had no capacity for running, or playing, or doing anything "fun" without quickly running out of air.

My earliest artistic influence was my sister Becky.  I was sixteen years younger than she was, and as such, I was a target of stories and pictures no doubt intended to scar me for life.  Becky's influences, as I remember them, were Jaws, Alien and Deathrace 2000.  So I remember sitting close to her at the kitchen table after she had gone to see these films and she would tell me (I think I must've been about four years old) horrific tales of chests bursting, and pedestrians being splattered on the highway, and sharks eating everyone in the water.  And Becky was a very spirited illustrator.  She would tell me these things and accompany her stories with graphic depictions of alien monsters, hopped-up racecars with machineguns and knives mounted to every available surface, and gory-mouthed sharks swimming in bloody waters, trailing arms and legs behind them.  I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be scared.  But all I can remember thinking was: "That is so cool."

So I entered kindergarten with about 10,000 pages of practice on death-cars, monsters and sharks under my belt.  Also: depictions of every conceivable character and vehicle from the movie Star Wars.  Remember: I spent most of my life until then in a hospital bed.  I have a toddler this age now, and I can realistically look back and say, I really was WAY more artistically developed than kids that age normally are.  And I could read like nobody's business, I tested at the ninth grade level in Kindergarten.  This eventually did lead to my being advanced two grades forward during the course of elementary school.

But, despite being a pretty sharp kid, I was doomed.  The allergy specialists I was seeing at that time had had to give up all rational treatments, and put me on cortisone full time, and even then I was getting carted away to the hospital three to four times a week in the middle of the night for adrenaline shots.  It was seriously thought I would not live for very long under these conditions.  So my mother packed us up and moved us to the desert at the suggestion of said specialists, and we wound up living in Prescott Arizona for seven years.  During this time I outgrew so many problems I became almost a normal person.  But we all know art-driven people are never completely normal.

It was not until high school that I became fixated on drawing females.  I worked a scantily clad female into almost every project I was ever assigned my senior year.  I feel slightly betrayed by the fact that I never had an art teacher who suggested that a living could be made just by mastering the one skill that I was working so hard at: drawing a pretty face. But, by that time, most teachers had given up on me; I had gone from being the darling of academic achievement (I was the top 1% in the country when I entered junior high) to mediocrity, and there was no reason to believe I would ever return to the previous heights (I didn't).  I couldn't be talked into caring.  Though I loved to learn new things, I hated school with a passion.  And I still do.  I had to meet with my daughter's Pre-K teacher not so long ago, and I was amazed at how much hostility I felt towards the situation.  I hope I managed to act civil enough not to throw shadows on my daughter.

I acquired no degree or mastery of any kind in college.  Am I a quitter?  Perhaps.  Teachers would ask me why I was taking the class or what I was trying to accomplish and I would say I was "interested" or "trying to enrich myself"; I did meet one teacher who seemed to get me though, even though it was evident that the whole class thought I was a barrier between them and getting a passing grade; every time I made a comment, eyes would roll, sighs would be heaved, and much slouching would occur.  But that teacher did recommend me to the National Honors Society.  And I'm quite sure the governing body laughed at her for suggesting it.

As a side note, my wife, and her mother and father, are all teachers.

Now I make my living mostly off of selling sketches and prints of pin-up girls and being commissioned to draw them.  Of course, this is not as consistent a work as it could be, so that is supplemented by making prints for other artists and local photographers, and doing freelance graphic design work.  I do have an interest in writing and illustrating stories, and have several projects, ranging from graphic novels to children's storybooks on the drawing table.

As a writer, I wrote the series: "Twilight America" as supplemental resources for a tactical tabletop battle game by the same name (the company which designed it is now defunct, but I still have a certificate stating I own 500 shares of them in my drawer), several erotic poems that (while first written for my wife) appeared on "Clean Sheets",  and two pieces of radio theater, titled, "Bluebeard and the Stepford Project" and "Bloodnight".  It is MUCH harder to be respected as a writer than a visual artist.  It takes a lot more effort for people to appreciate words than pictures.  And, even though visual artists everywhere will hate me for saying it, the reverse is true: five good words are worth a million pictures.  That's why the book is almost always better than the movie.