DAL:^ Thanks. You’re a Swedish artist living in
Spain? Which bit of Spain? And how do the
local landscapes / seascapes there inspire you
and your art?
CL: That’s right. I currently live on the Costa
Blanca coast of Spain, in a small fishing town.
Living near the open sea has always been
important to me, though I also need close access
to forests and countryside to feel at home. I’ve
never been much of a big city girl, I grew up
near nature, sea and forests and it is those
things which influence my art very much.
DAL: Super. And what is your studio there like?
A good view?
CL: I work from home, so my studio is an office-
room I share with my partner who also works in
computing. I do the artwork and creative side,
he does the coding and programming. We work
in different areas but use the same set-up
basically.
DAL: You also appear to have other ‘home
places’? Am I right in thinking that you have an
imagined world called Cassiopeia? Where and
what is your Cassiopeia?
CL: Cassiopeia is one of the first star
constellations I learnt when very young, and it is
still today the first one I can identify looking up
at the night sky. That always stuck with me and
that is what I decided to call the art-side of my
life. My Cassiopeia is ‘wherever I go’, it is my
home and where I work from. I’m also part of
several studios as a freelancing contractor. But
all my work is done from my own home and all
correspondence is done via email and Skype.
Thanks to the Internet my work place can be
anywhere in the world. Amazing times we live in
for sure.
DAL: That’s sure. Very exciting, and with huge
underlying shifts that offer optimism for the
future. Now, your DeviantArt gallery seems to
have started around 2010? So am I right in
thinking that you’re now about six years in?
What were some of the first “breakthrough”
images that started to get you a lot more
attention, in the early years?
CL: First time I even found out about digital
painting was when I picked up a copy of a
magazine called “Advanced Photoshop” in
Australia back in 2005. At that time I had no
idea what you could do on computers more than
playing games. My partner had also given me
my first digital drawing tablet and I had started
experimenting a bit with it. But it is fair to say
that I had no idea just what the potential of it
was. Back then drawing for me was something
you only did on paper or a canvas, and there
wasn’t much of a market for it. It hadn’t even
crossed my mind that there must be game
artists creating all these amazing environments
and assets for the games I was playing. To me it
was a distant thing that I couldn’t even dream of
getting close to doing.
I joined DeviantArt in 2007 but had very little
experience in digital painting at that time. I had
started getting a bit further into painting on the
computer with my tablet, but I was still very new
to the whole digital art field. My very first
breakthrough was in 2008 with an abstract
artwork called “Moon Shield” where I got my
very first daily deviation award for. The year
after I felt I had more of my style nailed down
and I had started focusing more on mythology,
fairy tales and magical settings for my art.
In 2010 I had my first significant breakthrough
with a few different artworks such as “Elements -
Fire” and “Freedom”, which are photo
manipulation artworks, where I felt for the first
time that I could control and create the effects I
wanted without the software program limiting
me. These are also the very first images I saw
published in an art magazine, and from that
point I had pictures shown in quite a few
publications.
This was definitely the point where I felt I had
reached a level where I could start calling myself
a digital art artist, something that I had only
dreamed of five years before.
DAL: What were the best resources you used,
which helped you improve and develop?
CL: I read tons of digital art magazines in the
first few years such as Corel Painter, Creative
and Advanced Photoshop and Imagine FX
amongst others. I tried an endless number of
tutorials from these magazines and I
experimented a lot. Photoshop and Painter were
the two of the main programs I used. The
learning curve for both programs was steep.
DAL: Yes, I think we often underestimate how
much time it will take newcomers to learn
Photoshop. But it is so worth it.
CL: There were quite a few frustrating times,
during the first years. When you know exactly
what you want to create in your mind’s eye, but
your skill on the software you are using is