3DTotal: Hi Drazenka! Thanks so much for taking some time to chat to us – I can’t believe we’ve taken so long to get around to this interview. Shame on us! Can you please start us off with a little background information about yourself and briefly tell us what events in your life have led you to becoming the artist that we find today?
Drazenka: Thank you for this opportunity, Lynette; it is a pleasure and an honour to be interviewed for 2DArtist Magazine. I was born in Croatia to a family with no apparent artistic talent. I am not going to say that “I knew how to draw from birth” because that is an activity that most children are engaged in at a very early age. I will say though, that my talent was acknowledged for the first time in my early teens. I enjoyed art classes and the process of painting tremendously and was constantly rewarded with praise from my teachers, who loved to display my work in the school lobby. I used to carry a pad of paper and a pencil in my back pocket and draw caricatures of other kids between classes, just for fun. These were no masterpieces but it gave me the well-needed practice.

Thinking back, digital art was beyond my comprehension. If anyone told me at that time that I would someday paint on the computer, it would have been like telling me I would have lunch with an alien or something like that! It is amazing how far technology has progressed and what impact it has on our lives.

So, I continued drawing in a traditional style using pencils, chalk and watercolours until 1998.  That was the time my husband and I formed our company, Magicgate Software. One day he dropped by and placed a Wacom Digitizer on my desk and said, “Here, this is your new art studio from now on.” I will never forget how confused and lost I was. It took many months to grasp the inner workings of the tablet and learn the software, along with many sleepless nights and lot of frustration. In the end, it all paid off and the learning curve has been the most incredible and valuable adventure thus far.

    
   

3DTotal: Ah, so you were pretty much dropped in at the deep end then! Well, they do say that if you chuck a baby into water newborn then they will instinctively be able to swim! I guess we all need to put ourselves in such situations from time to time so we can push ourselves. So how did you go about learning how to paint digitally? What did you do; where did you seek your advice and inspirations; how did you stop yourself from giving up?
Drazenka: [Laughs] I like your analogy. Only, babies learn how to swim much faster than I learned to paint digitally. I have to admit that knowledge of traditional media helps a lot when learning digital painting. In my case, I had a lot of time - about six months to learn all I needed to before I started taking on commissions from customers. It’s like in every other craft: you need to learn your tool. So I went to the store, bought CorelDRAW and set myself down to learn how to use it. The more I learned, the more I was driven to go forward and apply that newfound knowledge on a project. I actually illustrated my husband’s Cruise Ship

Employment Manual and designed thecover for it as my first learning project. Looking back, that was a big accomplishment for me. However, there was something missing: the software was not right for image editing and photo manipulation. Upon researching further, we found out that the real software to use was Adobe’s Photoshop (I think it was version 5.0 at the time). So, after finally getting my feet steady, a new ball was thrown at me and shook my confidence… Photoshop didn’t look anywhere as easy to learn as CorelDRAW did! I had to undergo serious studying and practicing. Besides learning from the software manual, I had to get a few other books like Teach Yourself Photoshop in 24 hours and a Photoshop Bible.  Those two books were real

    
 
   

lifesavers when it came to learning.Everything was fully explained and I had no problems tackling the program. I also started a subscription to a few magazines that catered to designers and artists, like myself. It was very inspiring to see other people’s work and to find online resources where artists were meeting and discussing their work and giving solutions to problems.

And that’s how I found my place in the art world. Fantasy painting came later in 2001;  I stumbled upon an online forum filled with beautiful paintings and immediately wanted to dab my hand into trying to see if I could create something so spectacular. As it turned out, it wasn’t so difficult after three years of practice with design. I just found myself wishing that there were more hours in the day to get it all done and I still wish that today!

3DTotal: Looking at your portfolio (http://www.creativedust.com/) I can see many beautiful artworks featuring recurring themes of love, seduction, hope, beauty, and even danger and death. Alongside these themes we find many stunning women – sometimes nude – who capture the viewer’s attention and draw them into your stories. Tell us, what was is it about painting the female form in this illustrative manner that originally captured your interest, and what inspires you to continue painting these fantastic creations?
Drazenka: You know, I have been to many art museums around the world and seen many masterpieces with my own eyes. The ones that made the most impact on me were the ones depicting the human form. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than the human body and I find it absolutely fascinating. The form and the
   
 


complexity of the inner structure is a wonder. I have also observed other people’s reactions to paintings.  Most of the time, their eyes would literally be glued to the paintings of beautiful women. I guess that’s what makes Mona Lisa so incredible.  Everybody knows about it, but they do not know what it is that makes it so mesmerizing. It is my dream to create my own Mona Lisa; a piece of art I could be remembered by for years after I am gone. That is what drives me the most and provides my motivation as I continue painting.

3DTotal: Yes, I can certainly see the same classic elements in your artwork that are obviously inspired by the masters of traditional painting. When you say you’d like to create your own Mona Lisa, do you mean in the traditional or digital medium? How do you feel about the digital medium in general? I mean, the Mona Lisa is a priceless piece of art that can never again be created by the same hand that painted it. So how do you see the “price” of digital art in this age of mass duplication and the fact that a digital artist never physically touches his canvas?
Drazenka: It is true, the same hand cannot create Mona Lisa again and that’s what makes her even more priceless. Artwork becomes more valuable after the creator is gone. As a creative person, I really don’t have a preference as to what medium I want the masterpiece to come from. It would be nice to have a painting on a real physical canvas that could stay around for centuries; that people could see up close - study the brush strokes, smell the paint and get the feel of it. Unfortunately the same things cannot be experienced by watching a digital canvas.  However, I believe that when the time is right for me to create something huge, I will be happy no matter what medium I chose to work in.

Honestly, it took me some time to answer the question of how I feel about digital art.  You have pointed out some of the downfalls (many things in today’s world are massively reproduced and not made to last) but that’s simply a reflection of the world we are living in. Everything is so much faster; work has to be produced with so much speed. Despite all of that, I love digital art. I love the power of it and knowing that I can pack my whole studio into a little carry-on and travel with it. It is definitely very different from the classic form of creating art, in which, once you have painted something, it stays there forever. Digital art has a wide range of possibilities, which I also enjoy having:  cutting and pasting, a variety of short-cuts, changing colours instantly without disturbing the render, precise erasing, layers and the most famous one “Ctrl + Z”. I am glad to be part of the whole digital revolution.

    
     
 
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