Full Name: Tom Artjoms Tirins

Born in Latvia, on the 8th of April 1986. Parents immigrated to UK, taking Tom and his older brother Ilja with them. For the past 10 years, spent his life doing what most teenagers do...went school and played around with friends, unaware of the talent that was brewing inside of him.

To the surprise of most, was never much of an artist until the age of 16 when he first picked up a pencil and paper to do A-Level Art. Became fascinated with Chuck Close, and tried copying his style an infinite amount of times...each one was a failure. It was that idea of him not being able to complete, what his idol was able to do with ease that drove him to go further into art. Later on, the high-tech gadgetry came into play...PC, pen tablet, digital camera. Photoshop has become his second nature. He would sit at home all day, every day and practice his skills. There was virtually no use for tutorials, as Tom enjoyed figuring out all the kinks himself. This made his overall progress more rewarding at the end, a trait that he still keeps up with.

At the age of 19, begun doing a Graphic Design course at Coventry University. The year went slow, and he encountered a lot of problems. But with his work now available online, he was able to make a name for himself, or rather a nickname Halo-Monk.

And I am extatic to tell you this...Kate is coming back tonight. She stayed behind in Riga, Latvia to change her documents. She is now Mrs Tirina.

I see your confused faces right about.....NOW. Indeed the surnames in Latvia change with gender.

Thus if you are a man you would have an "S" at the end of your surname, and for a female it would be "A".

Of course there are always exceptions but really don't want to cover those.

And so she is now Kate Tirina and I am still the good old Tom Tirins.

*whispers* But trust me...its still better than Lithuanian name changes, even their children have to change their surnames. Why do these Baltic states have to be so bloomin complicated?

Tom Tirins

Version 1.1.0 is finally out!

Had a few complicated issues and so I haven't updated the contect. But hey, as long as u got the looks u got the hooks (does that even make sense?). I may now present you with this reworked version of my website, with a large number of improvements to the layout:

Scrollbar I've decided since i cant customize the vertical scrollbar in the FRAME, at least not quite as easily as I had hoped, I would remove it completely and substitute it with javascript.

Navigation bar since I am using FRAMES in this particular layout, i have decided that a back and forward buttons will be required to quickly go back and forth between the frames. This is simply because if you have a IFRAMES and simply click the back button on your browser control panel, it will go back to a page where you originally came from, no matter how much you've been through on my website.

Side Menu A few additions to the side menu...Affiliates and Tutorials. Affiliates will include all those who I have met and am in contact with for one reason or another, whether business or leisure. Tutorials will encorporate all those tutorials created by me as well as all the additional resource materials that will be required to successfuly complete all of the above. These will include Photoshop, Photography, HTML, Java and much more...Basically, I will take you step by step through the things that took me years to master, and I count myself a newbie yet still. :)

Side menu (yet again!) GIFed a neat animation for the menu's mouseover effect, just to make it that little bit more attractive, interactive and fun :)

Lets see...well thats about all I wanted to tell you guys. So go ahead, take this baby for a spin. Tell me what you think, ways to contact me can always be found in CONTACT

Tom Tirins