Art & Life with Tatiana Yamshanova

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tatiana Yamshanova.

Tatiana, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I was drawing something since my early days of childhood, and it was different animals and birds, actually. Well, every little kid loves to draw, I think. But my passion for art was different, I always wanted to study and improve. And then the 1995 came. I was 11 years old and my father bought our first computer, IBM PC with Intel 486 processor. And what do kids usually do with a computer? They play games on it! But not me. There was MS DOS with Norton Commander installed and some simple graphic app, only 16 colors available. I used to spend several hours drawing crazy pixel art, pixel by pixel with a mouse. My first drawing was two fighting tigers, and then a New Year greeting card (pity I can’t share them with you, they are long lost).

Then there were four years of High Art School, only traditional techniques. But I was highly interested in computer graphics, of course, and no digital art schools or courses around. All we (my parents did the job actually) managed to find was Multimedia Design faculty at Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts. When I graduated in 2006 I still felt unsatisfied, wanted to be a digital artist. Worked here and there as a graphic designer, but this was a bit boring. Then I purchased a graphic tablet, Wacom Intuos 4 and began my self-education in 2D Digital Art for book illustrations and video games. Worked on several freelance projects but nothing significant. So, I’m still searching my niche, doing some graphite pencil art, drawing Fantasy stuff, trying to sell it on Redbubble and Society6, and of course digital art, all these fantasy landscapes, creatures and characters! I’m dreaming about being a Concept Artist, to be honest.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
Well, I produced a lot of artworks during my ten years of Digital Art experience (and there were several years of Graphic Design before that). Worked on casual games projects (match-3 and hidden objects) doing all kind of stuff: interfaces, locations, characters in Adobe Photoshop, effects, even animation in Adobe Flash. And this is all in the past now, the small studios I worked in all gone.

Now I’m a Freelancer, doing commissions occasionally, building completely new portfolio filled mostly with personal projects. As I mentioned before I love to draw Fantasy: dragons and creatures, characters, landscapes, with which I hope to draw people from their daily routine to have some rest and explore unknown lands, to feel the heat of dragon flames, meet a phoenix. I made my very alien looking phoenix design after taking Creature Concept Art classes by Hardy Fowler at Skillshare.com. He is a professional Concept Artist and Illustrator with amazing portfolio, I learned a lot from him!

Then I wondered what will my art look like when printed on something, on a T-shirt, or a phone case, or a towel? So, I began uploading my works to print-on-demand companies’ sites like Society6 and Redbubble, and drawing art specially designed for print purposes: weird dragons, mythical creatures – dark fantasy. And that’s for specific audience including myself. I create the stuff I’d want to purchase myself, so I hope there are some people like me out there.

How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
This is very difficult question for me, I’m still facing these financial challenges, so I can give hardly any useful advice. I see only three ways here: find a good job position with decent payment (this one seems to me almost impossible due to high competition), find well payed freelance project, be a micro stock artist, or an artist for print-on-demand companies. I’m currently trying out print-on-demand online stores and microtasks (most of my income comes from Shutterstock now, where I upload a lot of abstract vector art, but I can’t say I enjoy drawing stock vector).

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I’m not a traditional artist and don’t participate in any exhibition. I have only digital portfolios. First of all I have the Artstation page: https://www.artstation.com/miryanne Only relatively new artworks there.

Deviantart page: https://www.deviantart.com/miryanne where you can find much more art including some fan art and commercial projects. Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanyartwork/ (user name @tanyartwork) I post here work-in-progress shots, studies and some unpublished works.

There are Redbubble and Society6 then:
https://www.redbubble.com/people/tanyartwork
https://society6.com/tanyartwork
You can support my work here by purchasing items available in my Fantasy Prints store.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artstation.com/miryanne
• Email: tanjasum84@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanyartwork/

Image Credit:
Electric Phoenix
Brown Phoenix
Realm of Giant trees
Wandering in a Desert
Dark Side Unicorn floor pillow print design
Yin Yang Dragons with Inner Child
Armored Dragon Portrait T-shirt print design
Dragon Heart iPhone case print design

Getting in touch: VoyagePhoenix is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.