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Hi, everyone 
is pleased to present to you 
as our Special Guest Artist Feature today 
Paul also recently won by a landslide, August's Deviation of the Month for Traditional Artwork, over at :icondaily-deviations:
with his sublimely beautiful, Water Dragon piece:
Here's hoping that Paul's now on his way to his very first DD!
Without further ado, please give a warm welcome to Paul-Shanghai and feel free to visit his gallery. It's a truly moving and beautiful experience:
1 - Could you tell us a little about yourself and when did you start creating traditional art?
Well my name is Paul Stowe, and as the avatar name suggests I live in Shanghai, although born and raised in the UK. I have spent most of my life travelling around the world with work, having had the opportunity to live in the USA, Europe, India and China for the last 8 years. I started drawing around 2 years ago, just sketching portraits – badly
2 - How did you end up joining DeviantArt?
Well my wife is a very accomplished artist
and was always talking about art, artist materials and DA – so one day I decided that ‘if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them’ – she was my inspiration to start drawing and to join DA.
3 - What is it that attracts you to traditional art?
I guess it is the purity of creating something from a simple blank sheet of paper and (in my case) a pencil – in my view it is art in its purest form, no expensive paints, brushes or computers to create something, just your imagination, a stick and a piece of wood (pencil and paper) It is amazing to see what some artists can create from something so simple.
4 - Your gallery is filled with beautiful, intriguing images. Could you tell us about the process that evolves from an idea, into the finished artwork that you upload?
Well I still tend to use references to help me develop most of my pieces, but for me this is all part of the process. Finding good reference pictures mean that you have to search through thousands of photographs and other artworks – this provides you with ideas, inspiration and techniques that become useful when drawing from ‘scratch’ – very little in this world is completely innovative or ‘original’ everything takes cues from history, experiences or references – how you interpret and then put your own personality into something ‘new’ is what makes it original.
The drawing process itself is long and complicated, I don’t tend to draw in an ‘orthodox’ way, as I have had no formal training, I just blindly got at it , however one tip for portraits is to draw the part that first interested you in the reference – it could be eyes, lips, a hand or a piece of clothing, step back, look at it and it will keep you inspired to finish the rest of the piece (you will notice from some of my animations that I always draw the eyes first – once I see these I just have to put the rest of the face around them )
5 - Which are your favourite works in your gallery, and why do they hold a special place in your heart?
My drawing of Michael Fassbender was the first time I really liked what I had drawn, and was a step change from previous pieces.
Stormtrooper was my first ‘successful’ DA upload – I will always remember watching the number of comments and faves go up like an electricity meter – unbelievable feeling.
Melancholy holds a special place in my gallery, as I think it is the best portrait I have done, and is such a moving picture.
Running Water my most popular piece on DA, and the one that gave me 1000 new watchers overnight – I still cannot believe the reception this piece got….but I am very thankful
6 - Our final question would be: which other artist(s) do you admire on DA?
That is not an easy question – so many, but there is a small group of elite pencil artist here on DA who do things with a pencil that the rest of us can not even imagine, my favourites are:
Most of all I am honoured to be part of the DA community, and one that for 99.9% of the members respects each other, their work and their passion in trying to create art.
ATB
Paul
is pleased to present to you as our Special Guest Artist Feature today Paul also recently won by a landslide, August's Deviation of the Month for Traditional Artwork, over at :icondaily-deviations:
Deviation of the Month for Traditional (august) Deviation of the month
With a landslide win, we present to you "Water Dragon (Pencil) by Paul-Shanghai. This deviation shows what patients and talent can do to a persons craft. Most will see this deviation and not realize how well executed it is and thus shrug it off as a digital piece, but no no no, don't let you're eyes be deceived, this is all pencil.
Without further adieu:
Take a gander at Paul-Shanghai's work if you've got the time to be amazed by some truly awesome work, and as always give fav the deviation if you like it and suggest it to your CR TEAM; we'll definitely be doing it.
Upcoming events
- As promised our first staff interview will be posted soon so look out for that as it's sure to be an interesting one. In addition, a new poll will be updated for the next staff member to be interviewed
- If you're interested in joining our staff, just send an note to :devdaily-deviations:, FailedStar (that would be m
with his sublimely beautiful, Water Dragon piece:
Here's hoping that Paul's now on his way to his very first DD!
Without further ado, please give a warm welcome to Paul-Shanghai and feel free to visit his gallery. It's a truly moving and beautiful experience:
1 - Could you tell us a little about yourself and when did you start creating traditional art?
Well my name is Paul Stowe, and as the avatar name suggests I live in Shanghai, although born and raised in the UK. I have spent most of my life travelling around the world with work, having had the opportunity to live in the USA, Europe, India and China for the last 8 years. I started drawing around 2 years ago, just sketching portraits – badly
2 - How did you end up joining DeviantArt?
Well my wife is a very accomplished artist
and was always talking about art, artist materials and DA – so one day I decided that ‘if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them’ – she was my inspiration to start drawing and to join DA.
3 - What is it that attracts you to traditional art?
I guess it is the purity of creating something from a simple blank sheet of paper and (in my case) a pencil – in my view it is art in its purest form, no expensive paints, brushes or computers to create something, just your imagination, a stick and a piece of wood (pencil and paper) It is amazing to see what some artists can create from something so simple.
4 - Your gallery is filled with beautiful, intriguing images. Could you tell us about the process that evolves from an idea, into the finished artwork that you upload?
Well I still tend to use references to help me develop most of my pieces, but for me this is all part of the process. Finding good reference pictures mean that you have to search through thousands of photographs and other artworks – this provides you with ideas, inspiration and techniques that become useful when drawing from ‘scratch’ – very little in this world is completely innovative or ‘original’ everything takes cues from history, experiences or references – how you interpret and then put your own personality into something ‘new’ is what makes it original.
The drawing process itself is long and complicated, I don’t tend to draw in an ‘orthodox’ way, as I have had no formal training, I just blindly got at it
, however one tip for portraits is to draw the part that first interested you in the reference – it could be eyes, lips, a hand or a piece of clothing, step back, look at it and it will keep you inspired to finish the rest of the piece (you will notice from some of my animations that I always draw the eyes first – once I see these I just have to put the rest of the face around them )
5 - Which are your favourite works in your gallery, and why do they hold a special place in your heart?
My drawing of Michael Fassbender was the first time I really liked what I had drawn, and was a step change from previous pieces.
Stormtrooper was my first ‘successful’ DA upload – I will always remember watching the number of comments and faves go up like an electricity meter – unbelievable feeling.
Melancholy holds a special place in my gallery, as I think it is the best portrait I have done, and is such a moving picture.
Running Water my most popular piece on DA, and the one that gave me 1000 new watchers overnight – I still cannot believe the reception this piece got….but I am very thankful
6 - Our final question would be: which other artist(s) do you admire on DA?
That is not an easy question – so many, but there is a small group of elite pencil artist here on DA who do things with a pencil that the rest of us can not even imagine, my favourites are:
Most of all I am honoured to be part of the DA community, and one that for 99.9% of the members respects each other, their work and their passion in trying to create art.
ATB
Paul
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Comments2
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Wow, he is so talented!! 