DA's NoreLineas, multi-talented female artist that she is, agreed to provide us with an interview for International Women's Week! Interested? You can check out her work here: [link]

Us: Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

NoreLineas:Well, I'll be 20 next month and I live here in Missouri in the USA. I grew up in small towns and in the city as well so I've had a bit of diverse living spaces. I've been at this thing called art since before Kindergarten, starting out with a Usborne book called 'How To Draw Horses'. From there I became the kid in art class that was always tackling projects that were termed complex but my teachers allowed it, thankfully. In my sophomore year of high school I discovered payons (water color crayons) while doing a mixed media piece and fell in love with them. I also started doing larger, mixed media pieces like Roxxor Drow. My junior year of high school I decided I needed to move beyond just drawing mediums so I continued with the payons and took up sculpting. Over the summer in 2005, I built Hex and Velokua. I graduated in 2006, bought a Wacom tablet to start messing about with the digital medium, and now attend William Jewell College, where I am known as the resident 'Creaturetologist' by the Ceramics Dept., a title I created to try and explain what I do to people who inquire.
My artist name, Nore Lineas, comes from the character I first created on Neverwinter Nights. It's completely made up by me and is pronounced (for those who wonder) 'Nor-ay Lin-ee-us'.

Us: What do you enjoy about art?

NL: Good question. Many people have asked me this and while my doctors say I will have arthritis in about five years at the rate I am going, there is something that makes the pain worth while. I've never been quite sure where it comes from but I have always been a compulsive doodler, to the point my mother asked me to stop bringing my sketchbook with me into a restaurant. What I enjoy about it from looking at my whole experience thus far is probably the freedom and the imagination of it. You can put anything into a form, or a picture, that comes to your mind. It's really very relaxing when I make creatures like Herododus because I get so into creating this creature, that I sometimes forget where I am, if someone is talking to me, or even my original idea for the creature itself. That and it allows me to sleep at night with a smile.

Us: What inspires you?

NL: Inspiration... huh. I guess my inspiration stemmed from my love of animals originally. Like art, I had wanted to be a veterinarian since before Kindergarten, until Biology I class where we had to dissect a worm and I got sick to my stomach. In fourth grade, I read two books: one was Bruce Coville's Into the Land of the Uncorns, and the other was The Dragons Are Singing Tonight by Jack Prelutsky. Now that was where I started drawing fantasy. I started playing fantasy video games in the fifth grade (starting with the PSOne) and started drawing the characters from the books that came with the game. Then I hit a point where I thought I couldn't make a dragon look any different from the ones I drew, so I started to just draw whatever creature was lurking in my head. And out they've come since then.
What inspired me to start drawing original characters like Nore, Malice and Wrath was the game I have played for now over eight years called Neverwinter Nights. The server I played on required a biography of the character along with a brief history. Nore's 'brief history' turned into a 30 page story without paragraphs in a week. (This is also where I started writing fantasy stories). I had a huge need to draw these characters because they had become such a part of my life! You know, get up, go to school, come home and play this character for hours until bedtime. So I drew them straight from the video game the first time, using the game's armor and weapon designs. I kept drawing these three over time in all different kinds of poses, but never my own, concrete designs. Now, after the characters are 'deceased' in the plot some three and a half years later, I have finished making their designs, as well as their armor and weapons, which should be posted very soon.

Us: Can you name me few awesome artists on DA and why they are an inspiration to you?

NL: Oh man, that's gonna be tough. I'm such a diverse artist myself it's hard to choose. But I'll try.

Lise Luera is a Ceramic artist I recently stumbled upon. The glazes she uses and shares with everyone are something that I really find just awesome. I've asked her questions about things that she's done to a pot and she's always been more than helpful!
Wen-M is someone who I aspire to draw characters like every day. His work for the Anima RPG is just fantastic. The line work is always so clean and his colors just seem to fit perfectly with the character. He always makes my mind reel when I see his latest work in my watch page.
BeastOfOblivion, oh my goodness. Her creatures blow my mind and that's a lot of explosives. Not only does she create these wonderful beauties, but she goes the length to flesh them out trait wise AND in a traditional medium! I've been so happy to watch her work ever since I clicked the watch button.
IllMadeMute, a friend of mine from Neverwinter Nights as well, has been an awesome friend to me through the span of years I've known her and she's helped me with anatomy, and we've shared drawings in progress over cam. One person I have always had fun with just sketching and laughing with when we'd show what we're working on.
MumboJumbo, a sculptor, has always made me want to try and conquer Sculpy to this day. What she can do with it in such (what seems to me) a short span of time, is amazing. I've asked her questions as well and she's always answered me with more than enough!


Us: Which are your 5 favourite works of yours and why?

NL: This is tough too.
I know that Herododus is definitely one. He was made in my first semester I had in Ceramics in 2007, never having worked with actual, non-Sculpy, clay. I had a tough time understanding how to keep things wet but Herododus helped me with that. I scared the professor and the studio techs when I told them I had worked on him in the dorm and in the lounge of the guys dorm, having had to move him around on a board. But when I finished him, they were really scared. The spikes on his leg were what made them shake their heads. They thought for sure that those would fall off. He went through the bisque and came out fine, then went into the gas fire, unglazed like all my Ceramic creatures now, and came out beautifully. I almost cried when I saw him come out. I felt like a new mom.

Another piece would have to be 'Speak to Angels', the mixed media piece I did for Drawing and Painting 1 in 2006. I hadn't worked in mixed media for a year or more so I was itchy to do something. And my mixed media pieces were always BIG. So, I latched onto an idea I got from listening to a song on the college radio called 'She Talks to Angels' (The Black Crowes version I believe). And I ran into class the next day and asked my professor, a new guy that year, if I could do this huge project for my final. He let me and I worked on it in just about everyplace on campus from 3 or 4 pm when I woke up till sometimes 4pm the next day. I got it doen the day of the deadline and scored the only hundred percent on the final in the class. It was also my mom's Christmas gift since she had always wanted something that was stars and cutesy!

Woodland Mount, a problem child. But, although he made me actually scream and stomp around my kitchen in anger at 2 in the morning for an hour, he turned out better than I could ever have imagined. His armor was so much fun to make and even though his neck exploded, he still looks wonderful and is a prized possession of mine. I can't wait to make more armor and creatures like this. Hand picking his antlers from trees on the farm was such an intimate experience I have never had with my creature building. So he's definitely unique. I do apologize to my mother for taking up her dining room table the whole summer of 2007!

Lucifer, the big blue guy with red eyes and long ears, is a personal creation as well. He's the avatar of my imagination. But not only that, he's a stand alone creature that has such a personality to him in his face that I just look at him and go 'Ok, what are we creating today?' He was created in a doctor's waiting room and became permanently associated with my imagination when I was in Ceramics as he kept showing up in my clay, unintentionally for me.

The last one is a very important piece as well. The Finlirynx Product was when I concreted a studio name, logo and title for myself. I went a week over the finals deadline for Visual Design, but when my professor saw it, he didn't care as long as he could touch it. It's been one of the more complicated pieces I have done, my dad having to cut the top of the plastic out for me with a saw. I had every intention of doing Hex for the creature of choice, but when I made him and baked him, he was about two inches to big for the jar! So, I turned to Finli who is my only female creature I believe. It was like watching a baby take form because she laid in my hand so much when I was making her, that I was very surprised when she was the exact fit. I made up care directions, warnings, how she would grow, how she would act all for this one project. She now sits proudly in my kitchen on display.


Us: What is your favorite medium to work with?

NL:I have always loved drawing with a mechanical pencil, and I can't see that ever leaving me. I actually got scared when one summer I did not draw at all and I came back to school in an art class and couldn't get anything to look right. I thought I had lost my drawing ability. Scared me to death! But when I started working in clay, it was instant love. I am a texture person and I like feeling different things. So clay is my number one love.


Us: Most difficult medium you've ever worked with?

NL: I have yet to try oil painting... but I can say that oil pastels, chalk pastels, and acrylic paint are all in the clouds for me. Except on my mixed media work, they never turn out like I want them too. Acrylics and me are really trying to work on our relationship bit by bit and so far it's going well. But the pastels are my nemesis.


Us: Tell us a little about being a woman artist. Has your gender affected the way people in the art world respond to you?

NL: Being a woman artist is something I have never really thought about. As kids, we're raised with the belief we can be anything we want to, all we have to do is try. Well, while this is true, I am starting to think that gender plays a bit of a role in being an artist today but not to much anymore. I think people have been a bit surprised from the way I look when I say that I am an artist, rather than me being female. There's the occasional person on the campus that can't believe what they are seeing when they watch me work in the Ceramics studio. I think people expect women artists to be more of the cutesy people and when I spit out a creature who's half dead, I think it becomes quite a shock. But it's never really been a factor as far as negative actions against my being an artist. If it ever does become one, I'd give it a good fight.
I can say from experience that being a gaming female artist is apparently a lot more rare which makes the reactions entertaining.


Us: What is your favorite thing to paint/sculpt/draw/write about/create a representation of, etc?

NL: Creatures, creatures, creatures. And my Neverwinter Nights character plethora. Creatures have an unlimited capacity for the imaginative thinker and you can choose to either say 'hey, it's a Tumbulajhay' for the sake of a title or, like I tend to do, you can actually MAKE it a creature by developing it's traits, personality, habits and even facial expressions. I've told my mother I would never have kids, but really... I have probably over a hundred from creating what I feel are in-depth creatures that, like Herododus, I almost cry and scream when they turn out wonderfully, and safe in Ceramics.

Us: Can you name 5 of your favourite works on DA and tell us why they are your favourite?

NL: I have a lot of favorites, as anyone can see hehe. But five of my favorite favorite ones I guess are:

Mechanical Horse by Plaugedog
Submitted last month, Plaguedog has done digitally what i want to do some day: Create a real life half-life sized mechanical creature that you can ride. The way the gears move and the leg and neck action speak volumes about how much he knows horses. I wouldn't be surprised if he spent months just watching horses move.

Some Paradise - pg. 2 by shoomlah
As many people know, I have horses myself and this page of shoomlah's comic speaks to my heart, way deep down in a very hard place to get to. The last frame where the girl has her arms around her horse not only makes me cry but makes me proud to be a horse owner. I have never gotten to hug any of my horses like this, which one day I hope to.

Me an' You by hellcorpceo
I love saying the title aloud! The toucan's expressions made me crack up then and I still do now. I really hope to some day have the print on my wall of my house where I can see it every day and just have a giggle fit.

Silent Light by Alexandrabirchmore
One day, I hope to have a Friesan horse as a companion, and this picture is what I feel I would see when, for the first time, I get to look at a Friesan horse I will ride. Even though it looks unfinished, I love that part of it as well. It enforces the fact that this is a moment in time and it will change in the next moment. The colors are simple and the lowered head of the horse makes it all seem so peaceful, fractioning off that moment of time.

Hyaena Mask by zenithfoxie
What's not to love! It's mixed media, it's wearable and it's a creature! To make something like this would just floor me. The realistic look of the face and the tribal qualities make me sigh with happiness. Looks like it'd be fun to wear as well! I really like how zenithfoxie also included WIP shots with it; I would have never guessed it was paper mache. I honestly thought it was latex!


Us: Who is your favourite woman artist and why?

NL: This was the last question I answered because my favorite woman artist is my dear friend Rosie Hashemi. She's not a dA user, but I have known this lady in person for about a year now and I'm closer to her than friends I have had for years. She's one of the studio techs at the college and the person I really connected with when I started my Ceramic life. Her lizard and frog mugs are FANTASTIC! (I own one very very proudly!) She also throws, which I never could quite grasp that first semester. Rosie is a wonderful lady all around who fires the gas kiln for the Ceramics Dept as well. She's celebrated the 'birth' so to speak of so many of my pieces with me, I think it literally makes her the grandma to them! She's pushed me further and further in clay than I could have done myself and I admire her drive to create as much as I admire how she pushes through life. We've talked about getting a booth together at the Renaissance Festival in Kansas and may do that this year!


Us: Finish this sentence. "When I first started in art, I wish I would have known ________."

NL: When I first started art, I wish i would have known where in the heck I was going to go with this being my strong talent in the world. It's very hard to look a parent in the eye, paying thousands for college, and respond to the question 'What are you going to do with this degree?" with "I don't rightly know just yet." I have a few ideas, but their what I call my big dreams: wanting to work for SquareEnix or Bioware to design creatures, armor and maybe even characters for them. My other idea is to be like Tatopoulos Studios and do things like Godzilla and the werewolves from Underworld, but make my own movies from my own books, as well as illustrating them.

Us: And finally, why do you choose to create art?

NL: I choose to create art, not really because it is a choice for me, but because my imagination demands it. It's something I believe that I was born with, this drive to just create anything I could with whatever was closest. It's relaxing because I work in detail and it makes me slow everything down and I never honestly know what the dumb critters look like until they are finished and looking me in the eyes! It's all so much fun!

Thanks, NoreLineas!