Showcase Saturday - Carina Nerland

This week's showcase artist is Carina of Norway!

Carina is one of my favorite fantasy and video gaming artists. I first ran across her art a few months back when I stumbled across this painting:

She has a very personal relationship with her art, which I appreciate. I don't want to be a "professional artist" because it would take away the freedom that art brings. I like to escape into my art, and Carina's art is pure escapism, in more ways than one.

From Carina:

How did you get started as an artist?

That is a very good question – as I started drawing before I was 2 years old, I actually don’t remember. But I guess it was my older sister and mother who encouraged me to start drawing. Eventually, when my younger sister was born, we naturally encouraged her to start drawing at an early stage as well. Me and my sisters were very quiet, calm and well-mannered kids who could spend hours and hours together, just drawing or playing videogames and minding our own business. We had so much fun doing these “activities” together, and I have lots of nice memories from those times.

I have never taken any drawing lessons or such – I am self-taught.

What usually inspires you?

For me, making art has always been some sort of an escape from reality. I and my sisters didn’t have the best childhood, as our father (to put it mildly) is an alcoholic and psychopat, and our mother slowly but surely was broken down from the way he treated her. When drawing we felt safe, and could focus on making fantasy worlds through art where anything was possible – where there were no such things as anxiety or fear.

Now that I have “my own life”, art is a nice and relaxing escape from all the studies I do. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering, and will start on a Master’s Degree this autumn. My studies are so different from art in all ways, which makes drawing and painting a good source of recreation. In art there are no rules or restrictions - anything is possible! Only the imagination is the limit.

I played a lot of videogames growing up. Since I got my Nintendo NES when I was 4, this also functioned as a reality escape. I’ve mainly played Nintendo. Videogames has from that time on been a significant part of my life, and is still today definitely my main source of inspiration for art. In my old artworks, I can see that I started drawing far more mushrooms after I turned 4 and got a Nintendo and Super Mario games, haha! I think the games I’ve been the most influenced by are the Super Mario series, plus the Legend of Zelda games on Nintendo 64 (especially Ocarina of Time).

Music that inspires me the most are soundtracks from different videogames, especially from the Zelda series. Those games have so much beautiful music with so much emotion to them! They also reminds me of long evenings of playing videogames and having fun with my sisters.

I have also had other inspiration sources in my young days. In addition to videogames, I think I have in the past been influenced by the old drawn Disney movies. I watched a lot of Disney movies when I was young, and was very fascinated by how well they were drawn. And I had periods where I drew a lot of “My Little Pony”-artwork too, haha! And oh, I almost forgot Pokémon. When I was around 11, I was extremely fascinated by the Pokémon TV series, collectible cards, games and such, and I drew a lot of Pokémon fanart.


What advice can you offer beginners?

That is kind of hard to answer, as I don’t remember much from when I started drawing. However, I think it is important to remember that you have to love what you’re doing. It really shows in the artwork if the artist put his/her heart into it or not. And of course, patience and practice is crucial.

I also think it is good practice to draw using lots of reference pictures in the start. I have mostly drawn from my imagination, but I really wish I had used a lot of more time drawing from reference images to make my style more “correct” and realistic.

Taking drawing classes may also be good help, although I don’t have any experience with that.

But then again, art is mainly a reality escape and a way to relax for me – it is something I do on a hobby-basis, and not something I plan on making a living from.

I really appreciate Carina's art for it's beauty and detail, but also for the heart that she puts into it. You can have perfect technique, but if you don't love what you're doing, it's going to be missing it's soul. She not only has the technique, she has the  love and the heart to take her beautiful art and make it sing.

I truly thank Carina for her time in telling her story, as well as for continuing to create such beautiful and personal works of art.

For more of Carina's beautiful artwork, check out her deviantART gallery or her blog.

*All artwork is ©Carina Nerland (www.xenonia.deviantart.com -- www.xenoniart.wordpress.com) and was used with permission from the artist. Unauthorized use of artwork is punishable by law*