Nuvem nuvem.deviantart.com

Buenas Señorita I´m a 32 years old Portuguese art teacher, also I consider myself as a "traditional artist".  I have worked in areas like painting, sculpture, ceramics and some other stuff.

There always is a silver lining...

Nuvem means cloud in portuguese, I like the way it sounds and I thought that I would name my son (when I have one) like that, my ex-wife didn't thought so, 'cause kids at school would make fun of the little guy, so I used the name in my dog and now I use it as my nick too.

HTML hang-ups

I still don´t have a web site 'cause I don´t know much about coding.  Some friends of mine offer their kind help, but I still don´t have "something" I really like.  I plan to work on that soon, let's see if I ever finish something decent.

It all starts with fascination

Skins. I found in a portuguese magazine something about windows customization, more exactly, skins to different applications.  The site www.skinz.org was mentioned and it was my first approach to digital art.  At first I was so surprised to see that my recently bought computer could be different from all the ones I saw before, then the design and originality of some skins were so fascinating, I remember the first time I saw the suites from Treetog or Dangeruss, that gave me some encouragement to start doing digital gfx.

Then I found the wallpaper section, which I was much more comfortable working with, as it doesn´t have all the coding part skins demand. After that skinz went down and I found deviantart, it was better in a way because of all the sections the site had to offer. The rest is easy to figure ;)

Where familiarity DOESN'T breed contempt

Everything, as I already had this artistic activity I have some background that helped me develop my projects. I think people are influenced by everything that surrounds us, real life, a book, a movie, music, feelings, experiences from the past... everything say something to me, I just have to be alert to receive and to transmit those things in some art form.

Views on the GFX community

Humm... it is healthy. There are many new artists and artist skinners showing their skills these days. Also the amount of community sites in activity at the moment gives the user the chance to choose what he likes best or where he feels better. I remember the time when skinz and deskmod were the only choices in those fields, if you didn´t fit on the parameters of those sites it wasn´t much of a choice. Today we have many choices were people can visit for the different reasons they may have. Personally, I like a lot of those communities and the active interaction among the members.

What particular style or technique do you consider as your trademark

Clever question :) I think that for the guys out there that saw my work my main style have to be surrealism, something betwen Dali and Giger (not that I could be that good), at least that's what people constantly say to me. The funny part is that those artists aren´t my favourites, even if I admire their artwork and I don´t try to express myself with surrealism, but the fact is that at the end I have to admit a very strong surrealism mood is present in my stuff. I guess I can´t help my self doing it, heh. My favourite artists are Tapies, Francis Bacon, and some more traditional artists. I like abstraction very much and symbolism is something I admire deeply...and yes, surrealism too.  ;)

Of Pixies and pixels...

Ah, that changes a lot....I like all the music that surprise me in any way, so I ear a lot of difrent kinds of music. If I had to coose some styles I can say that punk, and alternative music is something that populates my hard drive. My favourite band are Pixies, if that helps to get my music taste.

Favorite movies...

All from Jaques Tatie and Fellini. The last one I saw that I realy liked was A.I from Spielberg... touching.

Do you create for yourself or for an audience?

Tricky question.  I can´t honestly say I create for my self, if I did it I wouldn´t put my work in sites in the internet or in galleries for people to see it, right?

I think that those artists that say "I do my art for myself and I don´t care if you like it or not" aren´t being truly honest. But I do create my work as I like him to be, don´t try to please people or give them what i think they want. That's the tricky part of the question and the real importance on an artist being true to others and to himself. To be appreciated is a good thing, make us try harder and look at our work more seriously, but I believe we shouldn´t think how others will look to our art or if they will like it or not in the creation process. If we do we aren´t being honest and sooner or later people will notice that.

Top three favorite websites

www.deviantart.com
www.endeffect.com
www.razorart.com

Tools and softwares

Painter 7, Wacom tablet, Sony cybershot , Photopaint, Bryce, Rhino, Photoshop, brain and smokes :)

Do you think there's such a thing as pornography?

Yes. When you get those pop windows telling you to go and see Roxana´s web cam :) That's a delicate subject cause I think people are free to do what they want, that includes to sell her/his body as long as they respect others. When people are used or explored, that's a completely different situation, of course I can´t agree with that situation, above all is respect, we can agree or not but we always should respect other people, beliefs, ways of life. I would like to express myself a litle better in this question but as is obvious my english isn´t enough to.

Favorite artists

Digital:
Graphics: Jigit, Realitysquared, percurser, iamall... and some more Skins: Treetog, Dangeruss, Monaux

Traditional: Tapies, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt, Joan Miró.

Moral issues which constrain your creativity

Humn... not sure if I understand this one.....art can take a million different forms, some aren´t so easy to understand as others. Above all we mustn´t condemn something without trying to understand it first, a lot of people do that... heh, I think I am not answering the question... moral... I have my own and I create following my beliefs and opinions, as everybody else, when I see other people work I don´t try to put myself in the artist position to try to feel the same as he did but I try to take some of the piece for me, art is like a shop, we go in see and if we like it we bring something with us, that makes us happy and wise. Sometimes we must see carefully or we will miss beautiful things there.

Hope this make sense and answers part of the question :)

Touch and go

Emporium.

Is the most elaborated digital piece of mine but is also the most consistent. All the details were worked 'til the exhaustion, every image means something, have his own part in the big cake. Compositionally and technically, it is my best piece.

The idea behind the gfx changed when I first started to work on it, that happens a lot to me, I start something that I have no idea what will become to and after some time everything is very clear in my mind, I know where I want to take it. In the meantime when you don´t know what it will be is the most fun and gives me such pleasure. Then is just to execute the idea. Ideas are the most important thing, not skills. Emporium had all that, and at the end every step I had to go through to finish it, makes sense. To finish a piece is always a joy mixed with sadness, like you made it, now let it go, it have his own life.

Oh, I forgot the idea behind it, heh, it's just a statement about lost empires, how man have the power to create huge things and then all that goes down like a cards castle. Everything in life dies, let's enjoy it when it lasts.

if you weren't 'photoshopping' what would you be doing?

hum... so many things... chatting with a friend after a great meal. :)

your top three beautiful/sexiest women?

You guys never heared of them, they are real life girls :).
Ok, lets see... Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, and......... China :)

Last words though we hope to hear more

If you love it, do it, but don´t take this too seriously, don´t forget to have a nice life out there, the world is full of beautiful things...and try , try try, till you have a smile in your face, that's when it's done.

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