We found Denise’s illustrations on the Brooklyn Art Project website. Denise obtained her BFA from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. As a lover of illustration and design, she became a graphic designer upon graduation.
Denise continued creating illustrations but did not have a style she could call her own. About seven years ago, Denise realized that although she was enjoying a creative career as a graphic designer, she had stopped doing anything simply for the joy of creating. When Denise was a child, she drew constantly. In college, she was never without her sketchbook. But as an adult graphic designer, she got to a point where she couldn’t remember the last time she had drawn for fun.
This was when Denise decided to start drawing again. She gave herself an assignment and a deadline each week. She had no client to please and no creative director to impress. Denise described how she regained her joy of creating artwork: Read More
Elise Wilk is a French graphic illustrator who submitted her work to Creativation Space. We were quite impressed by the originality of her work which turns out to be an offshoot of her background in theater. While working in theatre in Paris, she decided to study art in Naples and Bruxelles, studying illustration.
“Rebounds”
Elise believes that art is another way of looking at the world, but in a more sensitive way. Her roots in theater manifest themselves in her work, where her physical approach in painting and drawing are a reflection of her background in buto, dance, and improvisation. A distinct feature of her art is the presence of dramatic characters wearing masks grotesque expressions, often appearing in colorful action poses.
Paula Guinto is a teacher, writer, and contributor to our affiliate site LitraTula. We’ve always felt that her photos stood out in how they captured the emotions of her subjects. As a writer and a teacher, Paula considers documenting and collecting objects as part of her DNA. She credits the influence of her brother Mon, who has been a photographer hobbyist for over twenty years.
A lot has been written about the beauty and culture of India so I didn’t have to ask her why she chose the country as a subject. What I wanted to know was if she anticipated on her first visit that she would be able to capture such stunning photos of its people, and at what point she discovered the wealth of images waiting to be documented.
Paula visited India for the first time without any assumptions. She had heard people’s stories and had seen photos in travel shows and magazines but never really knew what to expect. While she had her own preconceived notions of the country, she never thought she would fall in love with it. She became smitten by its people, the food, and seeing these through her lens, she realized how misguided her ideas were about a nation that was different each time she returned.
Paula writes: Read More
We found Saskia’s work on Deviant Art. We were initially drawn to her self-portrait because it seemed to speak so much for the artist. As it turns out, our assumptions were correct. After asking Saskia a couple of questions, we realized that she was indeed as introspective and reflective as her self-portrait made us feel.
Saskia made this piece based on her own photographs, beginning with tracing key lines of the face, and experimented with colors before she started painting. She notes the difference between digital art over traditional art in that digital art “allows you to endlessly tweak your colours without making a huge mess of your painting and palette. When I’ve got all the features, shadows and highlights in the right place I put away the reference image and work on the painting some more to prevent it from becoming an exact copy of the photograph. I want my paintings to be personal and unique, not a reproduction of something else.”
A portrait of the folk singer Sam Beam of Iron & Wine
Saskia’s use of colors is unique in that it appears to mimic the effect of light on the subject as a tool to magnify the smallest details.
Portrait of Eirik G. Bøe and Erlend Øye (Kings of Conveniece),
She also enjoys capturing images of her favorite musical icons in her paintings. Read More
Jeremy Baum’s earliest memory as an artist was as a child sitting on his father’s lap as he drew his favorite cartoons for him. Jeremy is a Pittsburgh-based artist we found on DeviantArt. He attended art school but opted not to mention the institution as it is under litigation. Jeremy believes that some college education and exposure to art school was immensely beneficial to his craft. He was exposed to influential ideas and like-minded people but advises young artists that a degree in art is only useful if one aims to be an educator. Otherwise, Jeremy believes that a couple of art classes should be enough exposure for young artists to figure out what excites them and to educate themselves from there.
“Kubrick” 9×12 ballpoint pen and Prismacolor marker on bristol. Copyright 2009.
We were initially impressed by the degree of detail and realism in Jeremy’s portraits. We asked him about his process in creating portraits and he said that he sometimes uses a photo for loose reference but mostly draws from memory or from his own face in the mirror, beginning with loose pencil sketches, outlining in ink, and then laying down the colors and the final hatching. Read More
I found Sara Skogsberg’s work on Pinterest and was immediately drawn to the woodprint nature of her art. Her pieces consistently showed bold strokes as if imprinted by a stamp carefully carved to show these details.
Sara Skosberg just completed three years of art school in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is currently seeking a conservator position. Drawing has always been a passion for Sara since she was four years old, but she didn’t really put much time into it until a few years ago when she decided to pursue her craft full-time.
Erin is a self-taught fine art photographer. During a vacation to Northern California as a teenager, she found herself fascinated by her ability to capture her surroundings. She fell in love with photography as a medium and has since learned how to operate cameras and edit photos. She is gradually developing her specialty in nature, landscape, conceptual and self-portrait photos.
A number of Erin’s photographs feature her image or body parts. She says that she uses her own image to convey the conceptual and personal side of the story. According to Erin, including herself in the photo allows her to have better control of the output and seeing the photos come to life.
Nelleke Verhoeff is an artist based in Rotterdam, Holland, who creates quirky and playful illustrations for her and her partner’s multidisciplinary creative company, yepr. Coming from a circus-inspired theater background where she came up with performance productions using handmade masks, Nelleke’s passion for all things theater is clearly apparent in her artwork.
About eight years ago, Nelleke discovered and fostered a passion in painting. With her growing interest in painting, she realized that she would have to choose between theater and painting. She chose painting, but her love of theater plays a huge role in her work. Her subjects are believable in their expressions and actions, and they strike a chord because they remind me of a person, a place, or an emotion. Nelleke writes that the rosy cheeks donned by her characters are visual representations of the feelings of enthusiasm, shyness and excitement; emotions she is very familiar with.
Maja Wrońska is an Poland-based architect in her fifth year at Warsaw University of Technology. She has taken on her mother’s trade of architecture and has been drawing buildings and castles since she was a little girl. Poland’s skill requirements for architectural school prompted Maja to attend drawing classes, which changed her attitude towards drawing and gave her inspiration as a developing artist.
I discovered Maja’s work through her site on Deviant Art and was first drawn to her work Girl With A Red Umbrella, particularly because of the detail in the building and its reflection on the street, combined with the skillful use of watercolor, and the concept of combining a structural concept with imaginative undertones. I first mistook the scattered white and red circles as raindrops, but during our interview Maja corrected me and said they were lampions as inspired by the lantern scene in the movie Tangled. Girl With A Red Umbrella is actually a depiction of Kupala Night in Poznań, Poland, a solstice celebration where thousands of lanterns float all over the city.
