Damian

From a childhood love of fairy tales to her present dark and stylish digital art, welcome to the world of Lyndsey Hayes (Lyndseyh), co-moderator of the RedBubble group ‘The Art of 3D’.

Lyndsey works full-time as a computer programmer in the UK, but has always had a need to create artistically, ‘it’s an itch I have to scratch.’ She was inspired early by the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, and is a huge fan of Salvador Dali and fantasy art.

For her, one of her most enjoyable aspects of art is the unexpected results, and ‘how with minor changes, you can make an average image shine – I love those moments.’ While not having studied art formally, she has been through many ‘arty phases’. These have involved pencil and charcoal portraits of friends and family, as well as a few commissions, and fantasy art using traditional acrylic painting.

Lyndsey first ventured into digital art through photo manipulation in Photoshop. ‘When I first got my camera, I bought a premier issue of a photographic magazine on the way back from London to read on the train, and it had a load of tutorials on photo manipulation in Photoshop 7.0. I promptly became obsessed with manipulating and creating art from photographs.’

From there, she evolved into 3D art, which she has been doing for about two years now, using ‘Poser, Photoshop and Painter mostly – I also use other 3D programs like Bryce, Vue and Carrara occasionally. Typically, I will create several scenes in Poser, which I then merge together to make one image for manipulation in Photoshop. I’m pretty heavy on the post work so I typically do all the lighting and most of the background stuff in Photoshop. I will then switch to Painter to work on the skin and hair.’

For Lyndsey, the appeal of 3D art is the photo-realistic effects that are possible, and the speed in which you can get great results. Her drawings and paintings would take a long time to complete, so when she started her own business, she had little time for art. She says that 3D art is ‘ideal for people who have time restrictions,’ and that, ‘typically I will spend about 6-8 hours on one image. The longest time I spent on one image is Necromancy which took me about 15 hours in all.’ The quickest image had taken her about 2 hours.

Lyndsey’s love of fairy tales is evident in her fantasy-filled gallery, and she says she keeps coming back to mystical, magical sorceresses. She says she has ‘always been fascinated with people’s faces, which is why so many of my images are portraits. I think women are more interesting to draw and paint than men and fantasy art is so wonderful because by definition there are no boundaries to it – you can draw or paint whatever you like. My images are very organic and have a bit of a life of their own. They often don’t evolve as I expect them to. I try to keep an open mind and go with the flow so they end up how they end up.’

When asked about her favourite image, Lyndsey said, ‘It’s probably necromancy because I love the implication that something really powerful and unexpected is going to happen.’

Necromancy

Lyndsey’s 3D art has been very successful, getting ‘Image of the day’ on ImagineFX’s (a UK fantasy art magazine) website with ‘Only Ask if You Want To Know’, plus images published on the DVD with an issue of their magazine.

Only Ask if You Want To Know

When DAZ3D re-launched their website last year, the image ‘Temptress’ was used on their home page for a number of months, as well as being published in ‘Exotique 3’ by Ballistic Publishing last year.

Temptress

She currently has her gallery featured on Artzone, which has helped enormously to raise her profile.

In closing, Lyndsey has offered this great advice for people interested in 3D art-
(1) Practice makes perfect – my very first Poser render (which is indescribably dreadful) is enough to inspire confidence in anyone interested in Digital Art :)
(2) Paint what you’re passionate about – it will give your images life and make them particularly interesting.
(3) Realistic expressions are what make a character (whatever the genre) relatable, so spend as much time as is necessary on them.