Lois van Baarle

Thanks so much! Lately I’ve been doing a number of paid jobs, including some character design for a 3D model as well as a two smaller tutorials which will be published soon. I also have some new art in the works. My animation is coming along well, I have concepts for the two movies as well as some concept art, but I need to free up some time before I can try to arrange some funding and take the animations into production. For now, I’m hoping I can do this in the spring. In the meantime, finishing the jobs I took on have the priority!

That’s very flattering, thank you! I think it was a bit of both. I just drew inspiration from artwork which I liked and drew really frequently, which caused my ‘style’ to evolve very quickly and become second nature. On the other hand I’ve always aspired to have my own style and valued artwork with a unique flair, so this mindset probably had an influence on the decisions I made and the style I gradually developed. In general, though, my artwork is really just the result of different artworks, fashion styles, and ‘looks’ that I really like. I didn’t set out to develop a unique style from the beginning, I just always enjoyed drawing and paying tribute to the things I liked.

Well, I’ve been drawing since I was basically capable of it. It’s always been ‘my talent’ – ever since kindergarten, teachers and fellow students always said I was a great artist. This positive feedback of course kept me motivated to draw a lot. It was only when I was around 16 or so that I started making digital art and drawing stylized illustrations from my imagination; before that, I drew less frequently and usually just life drawings in a sketchbook. Discovering manga/anime and digital art as a medium in 2002 really pushed my productivity into higher gear. When I started making digital art, I not only began working with a new medium but also participated in online communities to share my artwork, such as oekaki boards and Deviantart. Around this time, I started drawing a lot more and making the kind of work that I am currently known for. My main inspirations at the time were the comic illustrator Aurore BlackCat, art nouveau by Alfonse Mucha, and other digital artists like Bara-Chan and Yi Lee. To me, these artists all had such a colorful and consistent sense of style. Everything they drew was so full of life and personality. I wanted to be able to make illustrations that were equally captivating, and that was pretty much my only goal at the time. I didn’t have any higher aspirations until I decided to study art in my senior year of high school.

Yes, this is a very unfortunate event! Right now the battle has come to a standstill. With the help of my wonderful fans who called and e-mailed at my request, the clothing pieces featuring my work were removed from the korean web shop and I discovered that the overall problem is a very complex one indeed, since it is very tough to identify who made the clothing items (the web shop was not necessarily the manufacturer). Until I have information about this, it will be difficult and expensive to take legal action. Honestly, this experience has taught me how easily people can steal your work when you publish it on the internet. Ways you can try to protect yourself from this is to only post smaller/low quality images of your work or just not post your artwork at all, but honestly, I believe that if people want to steal your work, they will. It’s an enormous downside of being succesful and creating artwork which has market value. Up until now, posting my artwork on the internet has done infinitely more good things for me than bad, and with the help and support of my fans, I can get past sticky situations like this!

Working on d’artiste was a lot of fun because I had a lot of freedom to do my own thing and interpret ‘fashion design’ in my own way. I enjoyed giving my artwork a touch of glamour as well as trying out different things with clothing and style. It’s always interesting to write an in-depth tutorial since my approach is usually very intuitive and while writing tutorials, I discover things about my own drawing process by being more self-aware as I draw. The highlight was of course finding out that my artwork was chosen for the cover and receiving my own copies! I think they turned out beautifully. I want to create my own artbook in the near future but need to figure out how I am going to print and publish it before I can say when it will be done!

I’m just taking things as they come – I still feel like I’m just discovering life as a freelancer and have so much to learn still. I’m open to whatever opportunities come my way as far as illustration and animation goes. I do want to finish my trichrome series, so I do want to focus more on animation, particularly my own style of animation, in the coming year.

I think that it’s important for people starting out in the digital art world to start simple and try not to get lost in all of the different techniques and approaches that exist. There are so many tutorials and resources for digital techniques out there that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel inept. However, these are all just approaches – not rules, and definitely not the basics. You can only learn the basics by drawing a lot, be it with expensive software or with a crayon and paper. I found it useful to consult tutorials and resources only when I felt a need to achieve a specific effect, and for the rest to simply focus on my progress as an artist by learning things the hard way – i.e lots of practice.

Thanks so much for interviewing me and for the interest in my work! I really appreciate it!