Dark Matter Magazine

Emmilia Thomas Raharja is a digital fantasy artist from the city of Bogor, West Java in Indonesia. Her illustrations evoke a sense of fantastic wonder and emotion. Explore Emmilia’s fantasy portraits on her DeviantArt gallery Emmil.

Which artists have most influenced your work, and who are your favorite artists?
It’s not one year yet since I started learning my current semi realism art. I was a Manga styled illustrator. I really liked drawing Manga back then. But about a year ago… I was stuck with my Manga skill… I have tried a lot of style of Manga drawing and coloring until there wasn’t much left to explore anymore but pose and angle. I’m not very interesting developing those two any since I like focusing my work portraying emotions. And I like to show them with colors and details, not with angles of the picture.

So I thought, why not give realism a try? It has a lot of complex coloring to learn and showing the emotions in them will be more challenging. I practiced realism several months but I didn’t like it very much since I love to put a lot of exaggerating ideal beauty in my arts. That was when I decided, being a semi realism artist is a new path I should take.

My favorite artists come from many different styles. I like Heise or Fiemo since I learn a lot of semi realism from them. But I also like Dianae and Bobbie the Jean for their more realism touch. I also still like watching some Manga style artists like Wen-m. His armor designs are a good source of inspiration. There are still a lot of OMG skilled artists that I adore. A novel long writing won’t be enough to mention and describe how much I like their arts.

Describe your creative process. Do you start with images or ideas?
It all starts with feelings first actually. When I hear a sad song that I like for example, I can get sad… When the mood gets sadder and sadder, I need to express my feelings on paintings or other medias (poems or handicrafts). I start to think of a story in my mind, creating a character and finding the right ideas of how I should depict him in my painting later.

When it’s a commission, it’s much less the same process too. I like to get to know with the character’s personality and feelings first. Mostly people will simply say, “I want you to draw my character. He’s (insert appearance description here) and he’s a bad guy, kinda lonely with tragic past.

That’s not enough for me. I will ask tons of questions and interview my client of how could he become such a bad character? What happened with him in the past. I must know the feelings inside the character’s head so that we can talk about what kind of ideas will represent him best to the viewers. I want to draw the right kind of pose, hand gestures, eyes look that the character has.

What tools do you use in your work?
I use Adobe Photoshop 7 software at the moment and I paint with Wacom Intuos 2 tablet. I sketch digitally now.

Does inspiration come to you or do you actively seek it? If so, how?
If it’s a personal art, inspirations can come from lotsa things like songs, movies, pictures… even some real life story some people told me. Something that can touch my heart will make me want to pour it into a painting ASAP. It’s easy to find an inspiration, but not the time to paint them all.

When did you begin practicing your art and how did you learn?
I like drawing ever since I was a toddle. I’ve never had a formal art background study. I graduated from a local Faculty of letters, I majored in English literature. I’ve been learning arts and digital paintings from WIP or old arts of my favorite artists. If I’m lucky, they sometimes provide tutorials too. But mostly I take the time and analyze their works myself… No one can suddenly create an OMG artwork in one night.. There is a long learning process from zero…

Is there one piece that is special to you, or that you particularly enjoyed creating?
Azura is the most special piece to me and will always be. It’s a master piece produced after painting several demons before. It was the piece that took the longest time to paint ever (it took 5 weeks to finish). It was the first contest I joined in DA and I won 3rd place… I’m so happy knowing that my original character art will be printed in the same art book with some great artists who work for a famous TCG in Spain. I’m still waiting for the copy though. ^^; I hope I get it soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 7:30 pm and is filed under illustrator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.