Welcome to Digital Minds, a new interview series focused on the incredible digital artists here on deviantART. Today I am interviewing Ashzoi and I hope you will find her insights valuable.
Thank you for taking the time to let me interview you, can you please tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
Hi and thanks for having me! I'm Ashley and I'm an art student in northern California, majoring in visual development.
My work is largely made up of animals and creature designs set in fantasy and surreal worlds. Still learning a heck of a lot. How did you find deviantART and what keeps you here?
I initially found dA through a friend on neopets
and I think that was around version 3? A lot has changed! What keeps me here are the amazing friendships I've formed, the strong community, and the countless other fantastic artists whose work has inspired me to always strive to improve! What do you like the best about creating digital art?
Digital art is more efficient for me. I have ADHD, so being able to organize layers (among other things) is very beneficial for my easily distracted noggin. With digital art, my artistic process can keep up with how fast my thoughts move.
Please share with us the tools of your trade and any relevant information about them.
At home: I use a PC, Photoshop CS6, Paint Tool SAI, and a Wacom Bamboo pen and touch tablet.
At School: PC, Cintiq 21UX, Photoshop CC
For those who are tight on cash, Monoprice offers pretty nice tablets for a fraction of the cost of a Wacom. Paint tool SAI is also a great and inexpensive program.
Can you show us your favorite pieces from your own gallery and explain what you like about them?
Hard to say but I think it's these three:
While all three I feel could use some significant improvement, they all just feel very representative of my personality. Especially Hungry! It's just so silly, a tiny striped horse chasing a flying carrot. That one was also a tough one because I didn't have much experience with perspective and organic shapes, but I feel like I did pretty well considering. When I have more time, I may go back and revisit them to fix anatomy, redo textures, all that jazz.
Do you have, or know of any tips/tricks or techniques that others creating digital pieces may benefit from?
Experiment with creating your own brushes, get critiqued at several stages in your work, and step back from the computer if you've been staring at it too long. Warming up for 20 minutes can help a lot too.
Also, search tutorials! One of my favorite things about deviantART is the wide variety of tutorials available here. If you're stuck on something, chances are another artist has a tutorial on how to fix it.
Who are your favorite digital artists on deviantART that you'd recommend others to keep an eye on?
Oh SO many! I'm a huge fan of kiki-doodle, Shadow-Wolf, dapper-owl,hellcorpceo, akreon, escume, Maquenda, painted-bees, andCharlie-Bowater to name a small small fraction of the great digital artists here.
What advice would you give to artists just starting out with digital medias?
Be patient. A lot of digital art programs can be overwhelming and frustrating, but with time they can be learned. Watch people livestream-- you'll learn a lot that way too!
Any closing thoughts?
Work hard, have fun, practice practice practice!
