Vladimir Andral, illustrator of Prissy On The Moon, is generally candid about his lack of formal art training when it comes to his ability to illustrate. Some people claim art can't really be taught because either you're born with it or you're not. Looking at his illustrations, I think I'm with others in amazement with what this self-taught artist has accomplished.

  We sat down with our very own "resident" artist to find out how his fingers and imagination work. 

 

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Recently via social media you released several of your pictures/paintings you created in the past.

What motivated to you show those particular works?
 

I had posted a quick sketch I made on Facebook and surprisingly got good feedback, so I decided to post a few others I'd done in the past. I'd been meaning to post some of my old works for a while; this was the perfect opportunity.







It’s been said that artists have maybe a medium, or a particular style of artistry they tend to stick with. From the looks of things, it seems your artistic style leans toward bright, bold colors. What’s your thought on that?



Hmm, I've never stopped to reflect on what my style is, but now that you ask, I would say my style is creative realism. I don't know if that's a real term, but it sounds right for me. All my art is inspired by some realistic scene which I then inject with my own fun and creativity.
 
In terms of medium, I love sketching with pencil to flesh out the main idea of the piece.  Plain paper and pencil are really all I need to get going. Once the sketch is done, I import it into Photoshop to work my cleanup and color magic.

I also love painting.  And yes, I do like bright, bold colors. Colors bring out emotions.

In some ways, yes; cartooning is a looser and more playful style than traditional painting so I had to adjust and allow myself to be less, well, real. But my version of playful drawing is different that most cartoonist. If you look at my illustrations in Prissy on the Moon, you'll see that it's not quite cartooning -- it's cartooning with a creative realist bent.

 Can you give an example of how you go from pencil sketch to finished illustration?

Sure. Below you will see a few sketches of an earlier version of Prissy.  
This first is the original pencil sketch drawn on a plain sheet of printer paper and #2 pencil.  I used our daughter, Hannah, as the model.
The second is the same sketch cleaned up and darkened in Photoshop.
The last one is the final colored piece also done in Photoshop.
I think many digital artist nowadays do everything digitally eliminating steps 1 and 2, but I love drawing with an actual pencil in hand. Maybe one day I'll switch to one of those high-end Wacom on-screen drawing displays, but for now, the three step procedure will do.

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What else would you like people to know about you?



 Although I am not a trained artist, I did take one mandatory art class in high school and one in college, other than that, I'm self taught. I basically draw what I see and make stuff up as needed.
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