I’m a creative who enjoys making things of all kinds. I have a particularly strong affinity for anything digital and always have from an early age. It was only in more recent years that I decided to take my love for art to another level, and as of 2019 I have been selling prints and other forms of select digital works online and in-person at media conventions around New Zealand (and hopefully elsewhere one day)!
Out of everything I’ve ever made and published online, it’s been my Classical Portraits series of fanart pieces that has resonated with fans and really encouraged me to pursue art even more than ever before. By taking my love for both classical oil portraiture and modern video game characters and mashing them together in a highly-detailed and elegant way, these pieces have connected me with so many other enthusiastic fans and the experience has been amazing. People really seem to enjoy them so I keep making more!
The very first Classical Portrait ‘parody’ piece I ever made was Mona Midna (left), featuring the character of Midna from my all-time favourite video game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, back in 2016. As cheesy as it sounds, the idea came to me upon suddenly waking up and after quite a few hours of fiddling around in Photoshop with nothing more than a mouse, I had created my first classical portrait parody that would ultimately lead to all others. It wasn’t until 2019, though, that I started to make other pieces in the same ‘theme’. In preparation for my first convention as a vendor in September of the same year, I made pieces of Princess Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Rinoa Heartilly (Final Fantasy VIII) and Yuna (Final Fantasy X). With only these (and Midna) available alongside a lot of other prints, I didn’t know what to expect in terms of sales or reaction but the results were very clear: people loved them! I quickly managed to make the my first Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII Remake) piece before a second much-larger convention in October 2019 and I’m very glad I did. Since then, I’ve focused pretty much exclusively on oil portrait parodies of characters and honing my skills at making them look like the real thing, both in their overall composition but also in their presentation: I frequently purchase vintage frames and repair/restore/repaint them to make one-of-a-kind custom pieces fans can purchase when I attend cons.
Altogether, I have only finished a total of 14 portraits. It doesn’t seem like a lot even to me, but when I think back to how many hours these have taken to produce I realise why the number is so low! There are also many portraits that I started, got quite a ways into, and then trashed because something just wasn’t going to work anymore and I couldn’t remedy it. Prior to 2021, I made all of these exclusively with a mouse and have only recently upgraded to a more sophisticated drawing tablet to make things way better for myself. It’s been a huge learning process and I feel I’ve grown a lot as an artist by doing these, so I’ll keep going when I can! For now, I hope you enjoy the current pieces in the series and I look forward to finishing some others sometime soon.
If you’re interested in buying high quality prints, you can find prints of all of these (except Midna, sadly) in a variety of sizes in my Etsy shop. It’s the only place to get prints of these pieces and you’ll be directly supporting me, the artist, as I pack them up and send them out to you (or a friend)! I also frequent media conventions in New Zealand, where possible, so if you’re in NZ I would love to meet you!
Click on an image to enlarge. Feel free to repost these on social media as they are already linked/watermarked. Please do not, however, edit or otherwise change them or use them for something other than simply sharing. If you’re interested in seeing my other non-portrait artworks, you can check out my DeviantArt profile for pretty much everything I’ve ever made. Thank you!
Spotlight: Classical Portraits series
