Artist iamsloth Talks Process, Making with Craft, and His MAX Mural

We sat down with Timmy Ham to talk inspiration, process, and bridging the gap between pixels and paint.

Timmy Ham — aka iamsloth — is that rare talent that’s as comfortable with a fat Sharpie and canvas as he is with a mouse, keyboard, and AI artboard.

The Phoenix-based artist and designer will be live-creating a mural in the Community Pavillon at Adobe MAX — designing the piece with Logitech Craft Keyboard before putting paint to canvas. We sat down with Timmy to talk inspiration, process, and bridging the gap between pixels and paint.

Your work has this really cool quality to it, where your digital pieces feel like they’ve been bombed with spray paint — and your painted murals seem as sharp as something out of Illustrator. Can you tell us a bit about your process and how you got here?

Timmy Ham.

I’m heavily inspired by vector art, but I LOVE using spray paint, so I’ve always tried to bridge that gap of making the digital come to life on different real-life mediums. I honestly take the same approach when I’m working in Illustrator as I do when I paint a mural. When I’m working on a mural I try to act as if I’m creating a digital piece and be as clean and sharp as possible. When I’m working on digital pieces I like to try and toss in some untraditional parts so it doesn’t totally conform to the traditional rules of graphic design. I’m all about adding that rebellious spirit of street art into the digital. And in the end, I think that spirit ends up being a defining characteristic of my work, whether you see it on a mural or in an Instagram feed.

You’ll be live-painting a mural in the Community Pavilion. How do you plan on staying focused and getting in your creative zone in front of 10,000 MAXers?

Headphones and a couple energy drinks. But seriously, focus is super important to me. When I’m in my zone it’s like I’m one with the work. Everything is moving and flowing perfectly together and time seems to stand still. Craft has been really great in helping bridge the gap from some of those missing links that would often otherwise break that flow and concentration. So I’ll just treat it like any other project, even though there may be a couple thousand people watching.

You’ve been working with Logitech Craft for a little while now. How has it helped you get a greater level of focus and creative control?

Craft has been a great tool for me in a lot of different ways. One in particular is the workflow — being able to quickly move through and change settings and flip to different projects and tools. It’s really simplified and sped up my process. I feel like I have less to think about when using it, which leaves more room for the creative brain space. Oh, and I 100 percent love the touch and movement of the Crown. It’s just made my workflow more fluid and uninterrupted.

Can you give us a preview of the L.A.-themed piece you’ll be making at MAX? How will that process start, where does it go, and how will it finish at the Community Pavilion?

I’m SUPER excited to be creating this piece for MAX. I’ll start off with some original mock-ups and sketches on paper, and then I’ll create a black and white piece of art. I’ll then throw that piece into Illustrator and re-create it in vector art before painting by hand. At MAX it will be a super fun process because people will get to see the whole process from start to finish. Can’t wait!

Visit Logitech Booth #625 in the Community Pavilion to watch iamsloth at work, try out Craft for yourself, and enter to win a custom-painted MX Master 2S by iamsloth.

Follow iamsloth’s creative process leading up to MAX on his Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube channels.