PE - S and R Artist Interview CasseopeiaArt

I've always had a keen interest in art and painting since very young, and I've always had a love for fantasy and fairytale themed images when I was painting and drawing, but my love for photo manipulation and digital art in general happened about 6 years ago when I came across a Photoshop magazine by coincidence. When I saw the amazing photographs were used to create such fantastic artworks I knew that it was exactly what I wanted to learn to do. Ever since then I worked hard on practising how to blend images together and how to use light, shadows and colours to create fantasy ridden artworks. I've had a number of artists here in DA I look up to and tried to learn from over the years.

Oh yes, I'll have to say yes to both questions here. Sometimes I have a clear theme or image in my head of what I want to create, and then I search for stock images that need to fit into my vision of what I want to create. But equally when browsing stock images for no other reason than getting inspiration I can come across a photograph that instantly sets of an idea of what to do and I'll start creating an artwork based on that one image. I'd say I work this way about 50% of the time.

Yes, it influences me a lot! I basically use only images from the DA stock gallery and yes it has happened that if a stock image has been used many, many times I'd look for another similar one to use instead. Only because if I recognise a photo from several other artworks my imagination get stuck on the themes I've seen it in and I need a "fresh" image to get fresh ideas of what to create.

Good quality stock images are always a good way of getting noticed and having artists wanting to use ones stock. If you have access to models to take photos of then spend some time on getting clothes and styling right since it's very hard to use model shots that has no specific themes or poses. When it comes to landscape and object stock photos try to think how a photo manipulator would use that shot in their artwork. As a photo manipulator I find that artworks that inspires me are when the artist use a different approach to a general and sometimes common theme.

When looking for stock the two major factors that decide whether I want and can use the image is quality (sharp and big size) and rules where I have permission to post outside DA or sell prints without having to ask first. The reason for this is bad experiences where some stock artists put up rules that you can not post your artwork where you have used their stock anywhere else without their permission and then when you ask for it, they can't be found or never reply to your questions. It's very frustrating when you have spent days finishing an artwork and then find you can never post it on your own website or promote it in your own portfolio. So these days I never use stock that is restricted like that unless it is for a specific challenge or similar where I don't have to post the artwork outside DA.
Keeping track of all different stock rules can sometimes be confusing, so this is also the reason why I started to take my own stock photographs. Over the last 6 years I've managed to add around 22 000 photos to my personal stock library!

I would definitely be a caramel cupcake...