Interview with alice

Time to get to know a bit more about alice. You've seen the work, let's hear a little something about the person.

Visual artists and music is like cookies and milk, does music do anything for you?
I like to just start my media player on a random letter and let it play. I particularly enjoy listening to M (Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Michel Polnareff, Modern Lovers and Mogwai) C (Cardigans, Cibo Matto, Concretes and Cornelius) N (Nagisa Ni Te, Neurosis, Nick Cave and Nico) and S (Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Shellac, Slayer, Sleep, Slipknot, Smog and Squarepusher).

What's your opinion about traditional media? Is it an advantage to have experience with real pencils, paint or conventional camera?
I don't think it matters so much. Anything you learn in one media can be transferred into another with a little effort.

How do you work? Describe the process you go through.
My process varies from piece to piece, but usually I start with a blank photoshop canvas. I don't normally scan any sketches in, unless there is a very specific look I want. For some work I paint partially on paper then scan in it, but after that it is just digital manipulation rather than painting.

I usually block in a few shapes, and just start refining from there. I don't usually draw a refined outline, simply because it takes too long. I often spend a long time on sorting out the first sketch, and it rarely resembles the finished piece. When I can't be bothered painting any more, I usually open up a texture file (often something I've scanned in, like a photo, or part of a painting) and arrange the textures over the top on different layers. Then I give the thing a silly name and upload it somewhere. My usual working dimensions are 20x30cm at 300dpi so that I can sell big ugly prints at deviant art (http://melora.deviantart.com/store/). I spend between 3 and 10 hours on a painting, occaisionally more than that if it is going badly.

What equipment do you use to create your work?
A very small Intuos 2 WACOM tablet and (at the moment) a Dell Inspiron laptop. I have an oldish digital camera and a couple of cheapo analogue cameras I use to take photos (usually used solely as inspiration, sometimes used in paintings). I have a box with lots of art materials in, like brushes, stickers, paints and crayola wax crayons.