3DTotal: I know we were absolutely amazed when we received one of your super high-res images recently; we zoomed right into 100% and the quality was just so pure and wonderful – not a pixilation in sight! What are your main commissions for clients right now, and what are you currently working on? Do you ever get any weird requests from potential clients?
Nykolai: These days, I mostly get asked for character portraits or character concepts based on stories, or covers for novels.  My most amazing long-term client is Jesse K. Hill, who’s commissioned me to do a dozen or so paintings based on a world he has created. He’s giving me so much artistic freedom with all the paintings, it’s just great. Of course, they are based quite solidly on his ideas, but he’s never once stopped me chopping and changing things around, or adding to them, actually asking for my input. 

I’ve also done a lot of tutorial work for magazines over the past 18 months – namely for 2DArtist and also some other trade magazines, which is always great fun, because what’s the point of knowledge if you don’t share it?

As for weird requests, I get some “oddbods” who want to get some “quick character concepts for six alien races and five worlds” done, preferably by next week, and then run a mile (or actually get nasty with me) when they realize I want payment! Mind, I’d probably take my price in wine gums, too…

3DTotal: I know that you are inspired greatly by history and books, so what are you reading and researching right now, and what impact is this currently having on your art practice?
Nykolai: Since I’ve exhausted all the worthwhile books on Troy and Ancient Greece that I could get my hands on, including online material, I’ve moved up in the timeline by a few thousand years, namely to the Middle Ages, focusing on European and Middle Eastern history, the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusades, the Knights Templar and everything that goes along with them, Saladin, the Mamluks and their rise from slaves to warriors ... you name it! Good old hypothesises and factual texts and the odd novel in between that covers said era. But over the past months I’ve had little time to read, which is a bit sad. The last books I actually read were The Charlemagne Pursuit and Digital Fortress – which had nothing to do with any of the aforementioned; they were kind of entertaining, but that’s all that can be said about them. No brain food.

It doesn’t really have any direct influence on my work, but I guess subconsciously it has. All sorts of pieces of either fictional or non-fictional data get stored somewhere in my head, and at some point or another I will make use of it – either directly or indirectly. I love how reading allows me to visualize things; something films take away from you.  Don’t get me wrong, I love watching films and get inspired by them, but I never feel really comfortable with painting something based on an idea I had while watching a film.

I was lucky to be allowed to read the lengthy introduction to the story by Jesse K. Hill that I’m currently visualizing.  I prefer that to just working to briefs. It really helped me not just to understand the characters a bit better, but also to get a feel for the world they live in. The same goes for the characters in Convivium by Andrew E. Maugham, but that really goes without saying, as that book is in my blood, as are its protagonists. It also is the book that started what I now call my painting career while I was co-working on it with the author from 2001 until its publication in 2005.

3DTotal: So your main influences are music and books – how very cultured! I remember you once told me that you tend not to get inspiration from other artists and that you prefer to source your own inspiration, i.e. through history books or music and the like. Having said that, are there any artists that you’ve ever aspired to be like or who’s work send tingles down your spine – be it one of the Masters or a contemporary?
Nykolai: Ooh, did I just detect a hint of sarcasm in there? [Laughs] Hmm, I think I would have to say Craig Mullins. He’s the definitive Godfather of digital painting, a modern Da Vinci. I know I would never be able to paint like him, but his work is just brilliant to look at. Most of his sketches and concepts show a very raw ability to convey reality, or heightened reality. And most of the time they aren’t even refined, yet show so much detail and an eye for light and colors that it’s simply mind-blowing.

I also rather like the old Masters, though some of them I found to be more impressive in print than in reality, maybe because of the digital enhancement that goes into many prints these days. I was always awestruck by Michelangelo’s frescos in the Sistine Chapel, until I finally saw them several years ago. Sure, they still looked good, but to me lost much of their magic crammed into the small space of the chapel, and the lighting wasn’t exactly perfect either. The art in St. Peter’s Basilica on the other hand just overwhelmed me; intensely beautiful stuff. All of Rome, actually, even the fractured remains of the Forum Romanum is incredibly inspiring. Florence was the same; everywhere you look is living, breathing art. Museums don’t do it for me, too sterile; it’s like the art is removed from its original context and with it loses its soul.

    
    3DTotal: Am I right in that you use yourself as a reference for some of your paintings? If so, is the reason for this because you are the easiest reference source? Or do you simply like to reference personal stories and experiences in your artwork? 
Nykolai: Yes and no. I used to use myself a lot for everything, as my friends were never very keen on posing for me. I would usually just reference my body for the pose, rather than my face, and then change it to suit the character I was painting. My husband models for me fairly often these days, which is great obviously when I need to paint male characters. Sometimes I feel the need to paint myself – face included, but those moments are few and far between because I prefer to hide behind my paintings, not be in them. The last self portrait I did was “Hit & Miss“, and it was received quite well, but I guess all you need to do is put a girl into a short quirky dress

and some high boots in a confident pose, and you have an instant hit, rather than a miss! [Smiles]

3DTotal: When you use yourself as a point of reference, does this involve photography or do you tend to work more from life – be it in reverse – using a mirror? I can see from your website that you’re also into photography. How do you find photography helps you in your painted artworks, or do you keep the two very separate?
Nykolai: When I reference, it’s almost always from photography. I have a good sense for how things should be even without any references whatsoever, but I’m a hopeless perfectionist. Sometimes I reference a face, other times a body or body part, and again, other times everything. It really depends. Hands and feet though I always try to reference, because I‘m still somewhat weak when it comes to their anatomy from all different angles.

Photography in general helps me observe things – lighting, shadows, angles, anatomy. Of course, I can sit down in the street and watch people and scenes, but they don’t stay with me long enough to observe closely, or as closely as I would like it sometimes. Also, I found that I can express myself differently through photography than I ever could through painting, and of course vice versa.

3DTotal: As well as your character work, you also have some really cute cartoon

   
   
    pieces in your portfolio. These seem to act as a nice balance against your more serious character-based paintings. When do you decide or think that the time is right to switch from your painterly style to a cartoon? Or are you simply always doodling in your sketchbook?
Nykolai: I never think, “Righty, now I should do some cute or funny stuff”. It just happens, and anything can trigger it: a situation, a comment, a mood, or simply boredom. I don’t have a sketchbook as such; most of my sketchbooks are full of writing and one or the other doodle, but nothing that I ever take further. Those sketchbooks and their writings rather influence my more serious paintings.

Although, recently I have taken up scribbling down some sketches that probably no one else would be able to identify as such. I’ve had some serious inspiration issues, in terms of being completely overrun by ideas that I couldn’t paint fast enough. Mostly, those ideas stay with me whether I paint them or not, but in this case I had to get them out of my head to make way for all the others that were queuing to get in.

3DTotal: I’m just curious, but how many hours a day do you spend writing and doodling? Do you find that you concentrate on one work at a time, or can you work on a variety of pieces all at once and not get trapped by one or the other?
Nykolai: I’d say I spend a good 10-12 hours painting every day, sometimes it can be up to 18. It’s easier in winter, due to short days and all, and I find it easier to work on digital paintings without daylight glaring around me. I normally tend to just work on one painting at a time, but that’s changed in recent months where I’ve had to juggle two, three and sometimes four at a time. And sometimes I just do a painting on the side to take my mind off everything around me, including what I should be working on; it lets me focus on what I really have to do without staring at it all the time, as weird as it may sound.

As for my writing, I only really do that in bursts – sometimes really big ones – where I just keep ranting on and on for
 
 


weeks on end. Something springs to mind, and I have to write it down lest I forget and then get angry with myself for forgetting. I usually get the best sentences into my head just before I drift off to sleep, which is kind of annoying. And even if I then cannot remember them the next morning, a remnant of them stays with me and usually gets worked into one or the other painting.

3DTotal: What has been your most accomplished artwork to date, and for what reasons?
Nykolai: Oh dear … I don’t know. Some might say “The Sentinel”, and I think I have to agree, because it was chosen as the cover of Exposé 5 (Ballistic Publishing) and subsequently graced posters and plastic bags at Siggraph in 2007, and received a Choice Award on CGSociety. I’m still haunted by it on many CG websites. It’s nice, but no one really knows who painted it unless they buy the book or happen to stumble upon my portfolio! [Laughs]

Other than that, I think it would have to be “Lucifer”, because damn it! It took me almost 6 years to get that from mind to canvas, with many more or less failed attempts in the process!

Also, recently there would be “A Beautiful Mind”, because it was meant to be just a simple study of Francisco Randez (the initial sketch shows that, as it basically is a copy of the original photograph), but something clicked as I was working on it, and it became not only a portrait, but a message, one that has resonated quite profoundly with a lotof people. The response to that painting has been amazing so far. And I never thought I’d do something like that (props!), but alas, never say never! I won’t say I’m never going to do that again either. Just not too soon, I think.

3DTotal: Are there any pieces that you have in your portfolio right now that you think you’ll go back to in the future and recreate them into future masterpieces?
Nykolai: Just “Lucifer”, “Nuri” and “Gabriel”, I think. All three need more paintings (and the other characters from Convivium still need to be painted, too!). Far too many ideas there! There’s too much material in the book alone to convey it all in one or two paintings. It’s a kind of addiction, I guess. Other than that, I promised Jesse to paint the “Samurai Templar” again at some point. Not because he didn’t like the first one, or because he’s grown tired of it, but because the image only shows one side of their make-up, the “Templar at Rest”. He would love to see a “Templar in Motion”, and quite frankly, so do I! At least that gives me a good excuse to play with my Katanas again!

However, all these are on hold at the moment, due to a rather work-intensive personal project being in the works.

3DTotal: Sounds interesting! Can you tell us more about it, or is it still a secret? I know you and Justin Lassen have been talking about collaborating…?
Nykolai: [Laughs] Yes, I can. And yes, it’s a collaboration with Justin. We were keeping it quiet, but now seems as good a time as any to let it get out there!

After a couple of years of just talking about it, and mulling ideas over in our heads, we have finally started work on the project “Of Light and Dust”™. It got kicked off by a painting I did for 2DArtist’s current “Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting” tutorial series, and has since snowballed, though thankfully not out of our control.

In essence, it will be a collection of five non-linear stories in paintings and music – not so much just music inspired by the paintings, but also paintings inspired by the music. The format it will be produced in is still open, though we have been looking at several publishers who may be interested in taking it on in book format with accompanying CD – the jury is still out on that.

I have been extremely fortunate to get the consent from five people to paint them for some of the images – all people who either mean a lot to me, or are inspiring in one way or another, or both. One of them is the brilliant Montreal filmmaker, photographer and visual artist, Patricia Chica (http://www.patriciachica.com), and to be able to paint her for this is the cherry on the cake for me. But all of them have their own different characteristics and attitude (as well as attributes) to bring to the project that will hopefully shine through in the pictures, and be reflected in the music as well. And even though I’ve painted them all before at least once, I feel like a kid in a sweetshop right now!

Now we can only hope that inspiration doesn’t do a runner any time soon, because we’ve been churning out concepts like there’s no tomorrow, both in music and images, but if all continues like this, Justin and I may be good to go (and show and tell more) sooner than we may have anticipated. [Smiles]

3DTotal: Finally, at the beginning of this interview you mentioned that you’d never intended to become a full-time painter … so I’m just wondering what you think you would have become should you not have (God forbid!) found your career as an artist?
Nykolai: Probably a bum in the street begging for wine gums [Smiles]

 
     
 
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