Hello, my name is Danielle and I am 30, I live in Wantagh, New York, in the USA. I am a fine artist/illustrator who works in all kinds of media, but primarily I use acrylic paint, collage, pen and ink, colored pencils, watercolor, and marker. I work digitally too, but not as keen on it...nor the best at focusing for long periods of time on a screen when the temptation to check email or play around on Facebook lingers over me. I also enjoy the feel of the organic process of making a mess/managing natural errors and surprise mistakes (...sometimes I will combine aspects of traditional and digital painting together to create something new, fix a composition problem, things like that... ) I am not anti-digital, it just doesn't make me comfortable. I actually want to improve on that, and develop a better habit of not being distracted while sketching on the computer- (another problem is using a computer for long periods of time makes me sometimes develop very bad headaches!) I find Photoshop a beautiful medium if you know what you are doing and your heart is in it.
My favorite topics are bizarre fantasy, surrealism and horror, along with psychedelic/abstract, and stylized portraits of people and animals. Some of my big influences are Gris Grimly, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, Camille Pisarro, Max Ernst, Magritte, and Sam Keith. I would describe my work most of the time being more 'stylized' than hyper-realistic, and although that genre of art is honestly not my big cup of tea, I still want to push myself to be more into realism, not only because of it's focus in the industry, but also because I know a solid realism skill will help strengthen my more loose and whimsical work regardless. ...My art education did often the best they could, but due to a combination of having a large amount of flawed, or very old very senile instructors- (I'm not kidding, one of them gave out only 3 assignments in a whole YEAR and she argued once to my face if I was really 'present' in class...her first introductory speech to us was a 2 hour rant about how dogs are her spirit animal, and all the evils of tofu. No I really shit you not!!) As well also...lazy foolish youthful rebellion on my own part, (which I mostly now regret). I don't think I gained all that much out of it as I ought to have pushed for. So that's why I am here, for 2017 to begin the process of repairing my art. I have been stuck in various 9 to 5s and all in all I don't feel right.
My ability to draw/paint has been around since I was a toddler. I went to study for 2 years in an Art major at State University of Albany and then got my Bachelors of Fine Art in Illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology...But I lack confidence a lot of the time and really am unsure of myself and my work, and don't quite know along the spectrum of Quality where my work stands. I like to think my work stands deeply in need of improvement, but it's not 'bad' either. My problem I think is a lack of constant focus and very easy physical fatigue, in all aspects of my life. I at times suffer mild depression/art blocks, as well as not having a very big personal living space to use at hand, nor a very supportive/art enthusiastic family environment back home to nurture my development...every time i ask for feedback, it's either clueless "I DUNNO DONT ASK ME! :D" or unhelpful but well-meaning"YOU'RE BETTER THAN PICASSO"s or most frequently, from my dad, my original artistic influence in first place: "Noone should pay money for this work/You are a good artist but make terrible artwork, you are a waste..." I don't mean to vent my personal BS down here, but yeah, it's difficult to feel confident in myself or motivated to practice without my art school community to support me like it used to. I come upon other artistic professional's work online, and as inspiring as looking at others' work is, the more it makes me also feel dejected and hopeless and never capable of being THAT guy or finding my art niche in life as a career...My intent is to end that mindset and force feeding me some well-earned tough love and push my body and mind to suck it up and produce more streams of work. My anatomy, light and perspective all can stand to be developed stronger, and while I have endless streams of original character and story world ideas, I have drawn them very rarely because I often give up too easily.
My big main intents being here/with my art is this: 1. To cultivate new good friends with talent to teach me more. 2. To bring out my personal stories/visions into reality...I have a lot of stories/desire to build small concepts to big engrossing ones maybe into comics, graphic novels, or just painting series inside me, and I want to not have them just caged and disappear into nothing inside me when I am gone. I want to inspire or move people, or at least amuse and entertain them with my ideas if I can. 3. To help my sister's own personal creative wonderful stories and ideas achieve reality too. 4. I want to bring income into my life with my creative skills. I wish I knew a less vague definition than that but I don't. Dunno yet how or what specifically I want to do, I just wanna figure out what makes me satisfied and helps pays the bills by this point. I don't really believe in 'life destiny', that ultimately if you stick with only only doing 1 and only one kind of thing all your life, you're not living it well enough. I want to explore all kinds of fields of art, and meet all kinds of people. I wanna play and experiment with different mediums, genres, and styles. I wanna broaden my imagination and skill set in all sorts of directions while figuring out what my personal signature' is, if I have one. 4. And finally, I wanna improve my productivity and mood, I think communicating with others just period and other artists looking to improve from so many backgrounds may really make me feel less alone and challenged in a positive healthy way to make other people see my work/help other people out too.
Sorry for all the words, I hope that wasn't too painful.
My favorite topics are bizarre fantasy, surrealism and horror, along with psychedelic/abstract, and stylized portraits of people and animals. Some of my big influences are Gris Grimly, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, Camille Pisarro, Max Ernst, Magritte, and Sam Keith. I would describe my work most of the time being more 'stylized' than hyper-realistic, and although that genre of art is honestly not my big cup of tea, I still want to push myself to be more into realism, not only because of it's focus in the industry, but also because I know a solid realism skill will help strengthen my more loose and whimsical work regardless. ...My art education did often the best they could, but due to a combination of having a large amount of flawed, or very old very senile instructors- (I'm not kidding, one of them gave out only 3 assignments in a whole YEAR and she argued once to my face if I was really 'present' in class...her first introductory speech to us was a 2 hour rant about how dogs are her spirit animal, and all the evils of tofu. No I really shit you not!!) As well also...lazy foolish youthful rebellion on my own part, (which I mostly now regret). I don't think I gained all that much out of it as I ought to have pushed for. So that's why I am here, for 2017 to begin the process of repairing my art. I have been stuck in various 9 to 5s and all in all I don't feel right.
My ability to draw/paint has been around since I was a toddler. I went to study for 2 years in an Art major at State University of Albany and then got my Bachelors of Fine Art in Illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology...But I lack confidence a lot of the time and really am unsure of myself and my work, and don't quite know along the spectrum of Quality where my work stands. I like to think my work stands deeply in need of improvement, but it's not 'bad' either. My problem I think is a lack of constant focus and very easy physical fatigue, in all aspects of my life. I at times suffer mild depression/art blocks, as well as not having a very big personal living space to use at hand, nor a very supportive/art enthusiastic family environment back home to nurture my development...every time i ask for feedback, it's either clueless "I DUNNO DONT ASK ME! :D" or unhelpful but well-meaning"YOU'RE BETTER THAN PICASSO"s or most frequently, from my dad, my original artistic influence in first place: "Noone should pay money for this work/You are a good artist but make terrible artwork, you are a waste..." I don't mean to vent my personal BS down here, but yeah, it's difficult to feel confident in myself or motivated to practice without my art school community to support me like it used to. I come upon other artistic professional's work online, and as inspiring as looking at others' work is, the more it makes me also feel dejected and hopeless and never capable of being THAT guy or finding my art niche in life as a career...My intent is to end that mindset and force feeding me some well-earned tough love and push my body and mind to suck it up and produce more streams of work. My anatomy, light and perspective all can stand to be developed stronger, and while I have endless streams of original character and story world ideas, I have drawn them very rarely because I often give up too easily.
My big main intents being here/with my art is this: 1. To cultivate new good friends with talent to teach me more. 2. To bring out my personal stories/visions into reality...I have a lot of stories/desire to build small concepts to big engrossing ones maybe into comics, graphic novels, or just painting series inside me, and I want to not have them just caged and disappear into nothing inside me when I am gone. I want to inspire or move people, or at least amuse and entertain them with my ideas if I can. 3. To help my sister's own personal creative wonderful stories and ideas achieve reality too. 4. I want to bring income into my life with my creative skills. I wish I knew a less vague definition than that but I don't. Dunno yet how or what specifically I want to do, I just wanna figure out what makes me satisfied and helps pays the bills by this point. I don't really believe in 'life destiny', that ultimately if you stick with only only doing 1 and only one kind of thing all your life, you're not living it well enough. I want to explore all kinds of fields of art, and meet all kinds of people. I wanna play and experiment with different mediums, genres, and styles. I wanna broaden my imagination and skill set in all sorts of directions while figuring out what my personal signature' is, if I have one. 4. And finally, I wanna improve my productivity and mood, I think communicating with others just period and other artists looking to improve from so many backgrounds may really make me feel less alone and challenged in a positive healthy way to make other people see my work/help other people out too.
Sorry for all the words, I hope that wasn't too painful.
