Thank you to *acrylicana - Mary It was a pleasure interviewing you.

What inspires you?

My usual answer is "the world", but that's so general. The fashion world inspires me most. Especially shoes and dresses. Either I'm inspired to work because I want money to buy them or I'm just inspired by an article of clothing or fashion style itself.

Who is your artistic role model?

I have a few, as one does. I simply love Erte, Charlie Harper, and Hugh Hefner. The design sense of Harper, the fabulous fashion and lovely ladies of Erte, and the business sense of Hef -- I aspire to combine that in my work and really, looking at it, need to push forth so much more with that in mind.

What do you see when you look around while walking down a street?

A world just waiting to be filled with bright, bright colours and often adorable little creatures.

Do you consider yourself to be better as a vector artist or a traditional artist, and have you had any formal art training?

I'm a lover of both and strive to make sure that neither digital or traditional take over completely. If I'm not pumping out something in Illustrator, I'm painting on canvas. Yes, I'm in art school now. Although I didn't have any formal training in vector work. That was something I discovered on my own and quite love (bold, clean, bright --- oh, man).

How long you've been vectoring for?

I tried my first piece about a year and a half ago. It was awful. It wasn't until 4 months later I tried again and fell in love with it all.

How did you get into Vector Art?

I wanted a way to mimic linear painting that I just plain sucked at. I noticed that you can get such clean work with vector art and really became obsessed with it. Still obsessed. Still trying to paint in a linear fashion too. I think vector art has helped with it all, as it's doing much better.

Why vector art, why not another form of artistic expression?

Oh, but I do have other forms of artistic expression. Vector is just one of the few I've chosen and is something I love.

Do you work with or without reference images? If so, do you ever find yourself vectoring things out of your imagination?

Both. It depends on what I'm working on, really. Some days I may need to look up a specific shoe and sketch it for a bit at different angles before setting down a finalized sketch and bringing it into Illustrator. Quite often, though, things are without reference and just based upon my doodles.

What is your opinion on vexels?

That's a fickle road to travel, this question. I have no issue at all with vexels that are "rastor vector" (is that too much of an oxymoron?), in which the artist just doesn't set their work forth in a proper vector program (such as if they use Photoshop instead of Illustrator). But perhaps you're getting at what I see to be an odd phenomenon of what could be construed as tracing vexeling. In that a photo reference is heavily used to the point of the vexel being created over top. I have no problem with that as a form of art, as there's been many pieces created in that fashion that have brought something new to the reference piece, but to limit oneself to that reference makes me rather sad (also it conflicts with that whole "change it 75%" rule of thumb). Such images, I think, would be better suited under a subcategory of photomanipulation...maybe. I don't know. There's a lot that goes into it (but the same can definitely be said with matte painting and photomanipulation). Oh, there. Perhaps it can be attributed to the vector/vexel answer to matte painting.
Anyways, I just think there needs to be more of a distinction when a piece of referenced so heavily from one source (especially when some people never cite that source...the amount of times I've seen that is pathetic).

Can you share some of your favorite Vector works from around dA?

Sure!

And here are some great works from her gallery: