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Names you should know: *EnchantedWhispers

Every week, the Rising Stars series highlights an up-and-coming photomanipulation artist whose name you really ought to know! This week's feature is for *EnchantedWhispers, Jessica, who has brought her work to a whole new level with continuous practice and dedication to art. She does beautiful fantasy work and is involved with many groups and activities, including #Heavenly-Manips and #Intermediate-Manips. Although she has been on dA less than a year, she has made an impact with her contributions to the community and also with her lovely art. I hope you will enjoy the brief interview and also take a moment to check out her gallery!

*EnchantedWhispers' interview

Program of choice: Photoshop Elements 8

Can you start with a brief overview of who you are?

My Name is Jessica Allain, I'm 31 years old and live in Canada, I love anything art related and my other passion is music. I have been on DA for about 10 months now, so almost a year.

How did you get into photomanipulation?
 
I originally wanted to get into digital painting because I come from a traditional art background and thought it would be easier for me to jump into. However after browsing the beautiful art on DA I found myself most attracted to photomanipulations and found them fascinating, from there I decided to give it and go and see what I could come up with.

If you click through the photomanipulation galleries, you will see that a lot of the art has the same themes. Where can manipulators find inspiration for new and unique things to create?

I think it is challenging in the photomanipulation community to be original; we all use the same stock and we are all influenced by each others work. This is not a bad thing but can be frustrating at times for people who want to be original and not follow the same path. I think the best inspiration comes from visualization of the stock; imagining what kind of mood and surrounding you want to create around the image is a huge help. It is important to pick stock that inspires you to create a story.

How do you see your own portfolio?

It is quite difficult for me to describe my art because I don't just do dark or just do fantasy, I love every category of art and try to represent them all. I guess if I had to describe it, it would be gothic fantasy style art because I think I am most attracted to fantasy art with a hint of darkness.

You've come a long way and have really developed into a skillful manipulator. What has been the most frustrating part, and how did you overcome it?

I think the most frustrating part for me has been just learning all the tools in PS, there are so many and it was very overwhelming in the beginning to try and teach myself how to use them appropriately.

What helped you most as you worked your way up and gained more experience?

What really helped me is to look at other manipulations that I loved and look very closely and for a long time at what they did to achieve certain effects, whether it was lighting, certain colors, etc. I would always keep that picture in my mind and experiment with these effects in my own art.

Show me one piece of someone else's work that you think is fantastic but doesn't have enough recognition. What do you think is great about it?



This piece got my attention right away, it is a collab by two wonderful artists and I think it's so well done, emotional and dark at the same time. Beautiful blue sets the mood and I just think it's a stunning piece that deserves more attention.

Finally, what do we need to be doing as a photomanipulation community to continue to grow and evolve?

I think it's very important that we all support one another so we can learn from each other and in turn become better artists ourselves, I am forever amazed and inspired by the multitude of talent that exists on DA and the warm and welcoming people that accompany the stunning art. Also, educating people about photomanipulation is important; many people that do not know this type of art think that we just copy and paste stuff but it's much more difficult and intricate than that.

Thank you, Jessica!

And now for the feature . . .