Fantasy Art Focus: Patricie Sapphire

"For myself the picture will always start with the pose, something I feel a connection to at the moment. It becomes the root for the look and the setting."...Patricie Sapphire

A beautiful girl wearing a pretty pink skirt with flowers and .....red boxing gloves....in a thunderstorm. Another lovely girl, who is a mime, sitting on a stool in shallow water with stilts and a parasol. A giant clock sitting in water while a winged girl with antlers and high heels looks on. These are descriptions of three works of art each with their own unique style, details and meaning. Works of art produced by one of the most creative talents in Second Life and Flickr.

left to right: Time Warps All, Baby Gunna Knock You Out, Mime of Hearts

Patricie Sapphire is this amazing, unique, and detail-oriented artist. Each and every piece she produces is very special with an all too obvious amount of love and care put into each one. By this I mean Patricie takes her time with every picture until it turns out exactly like she wants it. She puts her all into them and you can tell by looking at the beautiful color and intricate details once the picture is enlarged. This includes lighting and background detail, not to mention her talent for all kinds of effects, like water reflections and splashes. Her pictures tend to be eccentric, eclectic, and whimsical...with a touch of fantasy. Patricie also only produces pictures with some sort of special meaning to them, something that relates to herself.

Just who is she? Who is this outstanding talent? It is not surprising Patricie loved art in one form or another beginning at a very young age. She's always loved drawing by using charcoal and most drawing mediums, painting, wood works, lathe work, hand carving, and scroll saw. Because of this passion for all forms of art and because she was good at all she pursued, Patricie's Dad sent her away to an Arts school where she was "semi-schooled". What do I mean by semi-schooled? Well, halfway through her schooling, Patricie ran off and got engaged. To this day, her Dad still gives her a hard time about that!

Oh, Someone Let Her Out

A Few Clowns Short of a Circus

At some point, Patricie began playing Second Life and after the newness of the game wore off, she found herself looking for ways to enjoy it more. She began reading tutorials and blogs regularly in which she discovered the magic of photography within Second Life, just by noticing all the great pictures within what she was reading. This motivated her to begin using her creative background to produce amazing pictures in game. She started out just taking random snapshots and then later graduated to blogging along with it, also a way to justify all her spending in game :P She blogged about fashion by using simple poses that were less intimidating. However, because of a very traumatic and emotional hurt Patricie experienced within Second Life, things totally changed. She immersed herself into her artwork and began challenging herself to go beyond what she thought she could do. Intimidation had all but disappeared and out came Patricie, artist extraordinaire! She had begun to use her emotions and what she was feeling at any given moment as the motivator in her work. Because of this, a new level of art developed, and even her fashion pictures now always have a piece of what she's feeling at the time. She says once she finishes a picture, she feels a cathartic release!

Patricie continues to be just as passionate as she ever was regarding digital art within Second Life. She says, "I find Second Life to be such a creatively stimulating environment with heaps of talented people who have made and continue to make Second Life the great canvas it is. They have even left some blank spaces for us to create in as well."

Patricie uses Photoshop, Corel, numerous plugins, and a tablet for digital art as her mediums. Using all of these continues to be a learning experience full of new discoveries.

Patricie's Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patricie/

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