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Hello Elena, can you tell us a bit about what has led you to where we find you today?
Hey! At present, I’m living in New York, USA. I love New York! All my life I dreamt about this city, and about a year ago or so my wishes finally came true! So I am truly happy now. I work as a freelancer; I am trying to enjoy my job and I do only what I really like to, which is mostly character creation, illustrations for children’s books and my personal artistic projects. Actually, everything began in Russia, where I was born and grew up. My parents are also artists so I didn’t have too many options when choosing my occupation. Besides, I’ve always liked drawing ever since the moment I was born. In Russia, I finished art school and art college, and I am also a graduate from the Academy of Arts. Actually, I was meant to become a classical artist, to paint on canvas using real oil and acrylic colours, but I always liked computers so I decided to become a graphic designer and went to work for an advertising agency, instead. My drawing skills were then forgotten for the following few years. One day, I realised that I couldn’t take it anymore, and that I couldn’t be a designer - it’s all too boring for me! From that point onwards, I wanted to become an artist-illustrator, and to spend time doing those things that I like the most in my life. |
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Your portfolio (www.elenasedova.com) demonstrates a variety of different styles and techniques. Can you talk us through your favourite method, from the concept through to the finished piece?
I have no specific style in my art; I have no boundaries; all the time I am trying to vary and expand my artistic abilities and try something new. This probably happens because I hate routine, not only in my art but in my personal life, too. I also like to make changes quite often. I like to invent new drawing styles and techniques; sometimes I prefer to work in a vector-based application, sometimes just in Photoshop. In my opinion, technical implementation of the idea is not as important as the mood and spirit of the artwork itself. As for me, the most interesting part of my work is to bring an idea or a character to life – the rest is just a routine job. Speaking about my favourite and most desirable application for 99% of my sketches, drafts and illustrations, though, it is always Photoshop! Photoshop forever! For example, in the image titled “Fiery Jack”, the sketch was drawn in Photoshop and finished in Adobe Illustrator. Sometimes I draw the quick, rough sketches – it doesn’t take too much time but it helps me to lay down some of the ideas that run in my head and to catch the right mood. I hope to complete them later, but unfortunately, very often, the sketches remain uncompleted. I must confess that the way in which I work is not exactly the ‘right’ way. |
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For me, the major points in my art are the character, the mood and the inspiration, but not the composition or layout of the drawing. That’s why, in my illustrations, the “hero” comes first and then I work on the environment that actually has to highlight the character’s mood. During this long process many interesting details are discovered that take a very valuable part in my drawing... but certainly not ‘less valuable’ than the main composition. I also like to add some little “spicy” nuances, which are perhaps not noticeable upon first glance but later on you can learn a lot about the character from them! Let’s take the following illustration, of an old man holding a lizard, as an example to discuss the creation of one of my artworks… For the last couple of years, I haven’t used pencil and paper. From start to finish, I do everything using my Wacom tablet and Adobe Photoshop. So I create a new document in |
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Photoshop and choose the background colour. Then the sketch is drawn. Quite often I do not bother myself by drawing black and white drafts; the coloured sketches come out straight away! Usually I take certain details, like a nose or an eye, as a starting point for my drawing, and then follow up on that. This artwork is actually a human portrait; he likes nature and animals but it looks like he’s so much into his job that he has actually started looking like his chameleon – they almost have the same face! So as you can see, first of all I choose the background and the colour palette, then the character appears, but in initial sketches there was actually no idea of a chameleon – he showed up later on. I have to admit that very often when I’m drawing, I have no idea where it’s going to lead me in the end. For example, all of a sudden the chameleon decided to lick his owner’s wart (he got confused and thought it was a fly!). Also, I thought about adding a cage behind the man, but I changed my mind and left the background clean in the end. |
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