If you visit my ArtStation site and profile on a regular basis, you could notice that the social buttons have been updated, and a DeviantArt button appeared. Yes, that's it — I am glad to invite you to my new profile!

Despite the slightly frightening name, there is nothing "deviant" in it — except that any artwork is called "deviation" by default, but you quickly get used to it. The content itself, by the way, is quite pleasant: there is a lot of traditional photography, drawing and painting in traditional techniques, and modern experimental forms of art like digital art. In other words, DeviantArt is a more inclusive platform than ArtStation, which is focused on digital drawings.

I referred to DeviantArt in search for the slightly greater freedom of artistic expression: there I don't even have to concern about whether the genre of my work falls under the platform's rules or not. ArtStation is a bit stricter about this.

This is because ArtStation is supported by Epic Games, a computer game developer, and the main audience of the resource are artists who can draw characters for games. This resource even has a good updated selection of illustration jobs. But alas, since I don't draw from scratch, they are irrelevant to me.

But most importantly: this same framework sets up some of the difficulties of interacting with the community. On ArtStation, as I've seen, there are a lot of connoisseurs of beauty, and almost every new art of mine gets new likes. But, coming to the user who likes, I have little to respond to: I don't know how to criticise and evaluate characters from games, because I've never drawn them :-)

In my previously published artist statement, I wrote that one of the obstacles to finding my artistic niche is the impossibility of commercial demand. Unfortunately, I couldn't completely escape this trap on ArtStation because of its partial connection to computer games.

On DeviantArt there are no such problems - I immediately found a warm and interested community, with which I can productively interact and find colleagues of interest. My first impression is that I got what I was missing. Apparently, it is precisely because of the lack of a pronounced commercial affiliation.

But there are some disadvantages as well. ArtStation provides more accessible functionality at more reasonable prices – for example, the creation of a personalised website. This is important for communicating with unregistered users, so I will maintain both profiles — ArtStation and DeviantArt, and ArtStation will be a hosting provider for my website. But there will be more work on DeviantArt in the long run.

Come and meet me if you are registered! I am at:
https://www.deviantart.com/georgykurakin

I identify myself as a "fairytale photographer". This means that I create pictures with fairytale-like plots from my own photos using computer graphics. 

The typical creative process is as follows: I use the photo taken by myself and apply various effects in a powerful photo editor (now I use mainly GIMP/Krita), but avoid direct drawing — at least, I avoid drawing with any opaque brush in "normal" mode.  Instead, I use other blending modes, semi-transparent brushes, and a variety of filters and effects to render light, water surface, movement, or weather. 

So, my style is a kind of hybrid between conventional photography and digital art, but this combination makes it highly marginal in the both fields. The conventional photographic community is usually intolerant to any significant edition of the pictures: understanding the photo art as the art of "frozen moment" is a common point across almost all photography schools and sometimes takes form of a dogma. A lot of photographer use post-processing, but to significantly change the plot during this process is a kind of taboo — photographers usually are concerned about the potential loss of the "frozen moment". 

I am not sure that this "frozen moment" is not crucial for the philosophy of photography. For me, it is easier to say that my creations do not really belong to photography. 

Digital art is a much more dynamic field open for new experiments, but the most artists are on drawing the characters from scratch rather than using any photo as a starting point. This makes sense because this gives independence from any photography experience and regular taking new pictures (which has become a problem for me). But this leads to lack of meeting points with the most digital artists even in the technical aspect  — because drawing from scratch and editing a photo require different soft- and hardware sets. 

Some friends from the field of digital art compare my creations with the photobashing technique. This is, however, one difference: I do use combination of images, but this is less that a half of all my creations — and the number of involved images is typically not more than two. 

For example, this picture — "Wake up, my Dear!" — is really assembled from two images. The pictures of these flowers were taken separately. It is one of my favourite photo arts.

But this creation which, I consider almost equal in terms of subject matter, style, and even mood, is made from a single photo.

This is essentially not photobash which requires a lot of fragments or more active use of collaging techniques. But yes, the most close areas to my creations are matte painting and photobash. 

The fact that the both kinds of visual arts are commonly used in design and film making makes my creations more understandable for my audience, but even their acceptance is not absolute. About a half of my friends would like to see "more realistic" pictures — they are familiar with pholo-like images that fix a real moment rather than depict a fantasy. But luckily, I have the another half :-) 

If even the group of friends show such polarization, I am not surprised that for other artists, my style looks like a combination of incompatible things... like, for example, painting and sculpture. But I assume that this is not only the greatest challenge for me as an artist, but the greatest opportunity and the part of my creative philosophy. After all, even combining painting and sculpture is the keystone of the style of Shintaro Ohata, a Japanese artist. I remember how I was inspired when visiting his exhibition at the Erarta Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Walking between his 2D/3D creations, I have thought that we have something in common. Specifically it is the way to reveal our creative ideas, while my ideas themselves were inspired by William Turner. I think so. 

So, the combination of two types of 2D art is my novelty and the part of my creative ideas. I am also a scientist and know that now, the most discoveries are made at the interface of conventional sciences. I think the situation in art is the same. 

Moreover, this challenging demarcation between photo and non-photo, digital art and photobash seems to follow the areas of commercial demand. This is clearly visible even in the ArtStation sections which follow the popular topics in films, books, and commercial illustration. In pure creativity, the boundaries are blurred. 

This is the reason why my creations have no commercial demand in conventional places (relying on the expert opinions of 500px.com). But the use of non-standard style also offers opportunities for very surprising creative collaborations — and this will be the topic of my next post. It will be about non-standard solutions to create and promote my creativity and to address the challenges I have listed here. 

In the meantime, I hole this first post of mine will serve as a kind of my artist's statement. Maybe, someone of you have similar problems and principles — let's share them! Share, comment, and discuss!       

Explore my creations at https://www.artstation.com/georgykurakin.