Shortly after his win he grew un-satisfied with his skill in miniatures. He grew quite serious about his art trying to learn the technical aspects of painting and drawing where his teachers left out. “The art programs in my schools were ridiculous,” he was quite disappointed by the efforts of the art programs in public schools, “It wasn’t the teachers fault. It was the other students. About 3 out of the 20 kids in the class actually took art because they were interested in it. I can call my self entirely self taught as I took it as my responsibility to learn where they left off.” He started to learn what is normally taught in art school. He draws quite excessively. “Where other kids would be watching TV or playing videogames, I’m sitting in my room listening to music and drawing constantly. New ideas always pop into my head and in order to ‘stop the voices’ I must put it down on paper. I agree fully with Brom, when I’m not painting I’m always trying to reach a happy sing-a-long with the many demons dancing about in my head.”
            He soon discovered airbrushing. He learned about the art form in a conversation with former airbrush artist, Rick Helf. The conversation actually took place well over a year before he obtained an airbrush. One day he decided to purchase one and the journey began. Like fire, his talent soared. He won many contests including placing sixth in Mike Lavallee’s Tru-fire contest; Only 11 people where named masters of tru-fire and Jake was one of them. He has also been featured in AB Mag, the popular airbrush magazine. In this past July he attended Airbrush University in Massachusetts taught by his friend and mentor, Mike Learn (http://mikelearn.com/). “I can say that those three days are some of the best in my life…”
            Now he works on custom painted objects in his workshop in beautiful Marin County. “It’s not the nicest shop but it’s fantastically comfortable. I can sadly never do cars in the space I am in now but for bikes and other smaller objects it’s perfect!”

If you want to support this young talent please contact him for quotes and more information.

            Jake Kobrin, the teen-age artist from beautiful Marin County, only began airbrushing at the age of 13 but Jake has been creating art work his entire young life. “I have been drawing literally since I was able to hold a pencil,” says Kobrin, “and crayons before that!”       
            At the age of 10 he began painting and sculpting three dimensional miniatures from the war and RPG games of Games Workshop, Reaper, Rackham, and many more. Despite the large community of gamers and role playing enthusiasts, only the artistic aspect of the hobby tickled his interests. “On top of not finding the games all that fun, I was slightly embarrassed by the actions of the other enthusiasts. You would go to a convention where they hold painting competitions and even sometimes lessons and see people dressed like their characters from the games!” This was always embarrassing to him. He believed that would be “under his dignity”. “Miniatures are an excellent art form,” he says, “and much like airbrushing is commonly frowned upon by the rest of the art community. For some reason I’ve always strayed away from the traditional style painting. I spent quite a bit of money on supplies and materials for oil painting and I never really was all that interested in it. I’m constantly inspired by the great masters such as DaVinci and Van Gough. I thought I’d try their medium.” After rounding his third year of miniatures he had already won many awards including first place at Kublacon in the kublakids contest.