Renderosity: You mention in your bio that you work as a history teacher: how has your knowledge of history informed the subjects you choose for your work?

Artienne: As a history teacher, I must be critical in my approach of historical and archaeological details and circumstances. I avoid making hasty conclusions from a single reference and seek to consider multiple data points and their context. For historical renders, I search for the most authentic costumes I can find. I pay attention to the color, texture, cut of the outfit, hairstyle, or the type of weapon if any. The constraints of a historical theme impose some limitations on my own creative input, but on the other hand, guides the scene forward.

As an example, I made a render of a modern Viking character playing the violin. Then the idea came to me to equip him with an instrument called Tagel Harph. I asked an artist friend named LishKing to help me with this project. We started a collaboration where I assisted in finding appropriate references to keep the details as historically realistic as possible.

You have a real gift for creating compelling characters (I especially like your animal portraits). How did you develop this skill?

Artienne: I am an observer who likes to watch movies, compelling photography, art, paintings, and many elements of game design. I also often visit the Artstation platform where I can seek out reference images to my collection. It's a great repository of inspiring visuals. I like to explore characters, play around with morphs, change textures, and experiment with casting various kinds of light across the scene. Sometimes I will fire up Facegen and utilize photos of my friends to guide the morphing. For animals, I love watching nature videos about their life in their natural habitat. Much of the process is to just perceive and let observation be my guide.

You also mention in your bio that "In order to go beyond yourself, you have to know yourself". Can you expand on that a bit especially how this idea affects your artwork?

Artienne: Many of us treat our existence superficially and lightly, allowing others to shape us in a particular way. The life of an artist is more than just blindly following a track that has been assigned to us by others. It is, above all, finding oneself, to abandon the mask that has been imposed on us. Individuality enables us to conquer and write our own world. If the artist sets out on a course of exploration, he is able to determine what limits him and seek out improvements.

Critical considerations force me to correct my mistakes and enrich my vision. I attempt to refresh my perspectives, challenge myself with more complicated scenes and improve my postwork process. I seek to be open to criticism and new possibilities and techniques. With an open-minded approach, I can understand better the visions of other artists as well.