Wallpaper Art

Interview with Mart Biemans and Yvan Feusi

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 12:23 PM PDT

Hey friends, today we have a premiere! Our first duo interview on wallpaper art with two amazing artists, Mart (18) and Yvan(21)! Both outstanding artists from Slashthree art collective! They’ve created a mind blowing, watch my words, mind blowing – Wallpaper for you! So enjoy the interview, show some love and grab the wallpaper!

Mart Biemans Portfolio
Yvan Feusi Portfolio
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Hey guys, welcome to WallpaperArt! We’re thrilled to start our first double interview, could you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us where you're from and how you got started in the Digital Illustration scene?
Mart: Hello everyone! I’m Mart Biemans, an almost eighteen years old Graphic Designer and Illustrator from the Netherlands. I’ve always been a very creative person, it all started when I was young at the time that I discovered that I was pretty good at drawing. When I became older and the techniques became more advanced it was a natural decision for me to move to the computer where it would be easier for me to express myself, but also reach a wider audience. It all started at a small gaming forum but nowadays my work can be viewed all around the internet.
Yvan Hello, my name’s Yvan Feusi also known as Aiven. I’m 21 and actually working as graphic designer and illustrator at the cominup® cross-media agency in Geneva, Switzerland. I started as an autodidact, doing stuff in Photoshop in 2004 and since, I have always tried to improve myself and practice on different technics and medias. I entered into an Art school, studying and enhancing my skills working on dual-time in an agency. When I got my certificate I worked as a freelance designer during some time, but it wasn’t really my taste so I moved in as an employee at cominup which is really awesome.

This beautiful wallpaper is a result of your skills combined. Can you give some insight on how you started and how you made it work. It’s always interesting to see how people organize a collaboration like this.
Mart:I don’t remember if it was me that contacted Yvan or him who contacted me. But we’ve both been longtime members of slashTHREE so we both knew each other for a longer time. I used to talk to him a lot on msn and that’s how we got to the idea of doing a collaboration. At that time the last slashTHREE exhibition was just over and we didn’t really want to wait long with releasing, that’s when we contacted Bram if we could do something special for wallpaperart.org, because as far as we know a double interview has never been done by you. We decided that it would be best for Aiven to start, do 25% and then send it to me. After that I would do the next 25% and send it back, then we repeated this step. We never had a theme in mind and the main goal was to go freestyle and mix our styles.
Yvan:I knew Mart was working with circles and I thought it could be interesting to mix it with my own style, which is mostly made of painting. We made a quick brainstorming, just to find a direction, but we really wanted to stay free during the process so we didn’t want to determine a concept yet. To be sure the collaboration will not take months to be done, we fixed 4 steps max. We found a picture of a tiger which seemed to be interesting, so we started from this base. As I had to start, I firstly focused on the tiger itself, painted over it, added details, fixed the eyes,… then I gave the .psd file to Mart who made his part, with the glass explosion, red glows and minor fix on the tiger. Then came my second part, so I kept working on the tiger but this time I went deeper and painted at full view and some parts at 300% zoom to be sure it was neat. I finally gave the .psd to Mart who finished it, finalizing the glass, the background and doing some color adjustment to the whole composition.

I would like to quote something from the book, “The collaborative Habbit” from Twyla Tharp; “You need a challenging partner. In a good collaboration, differences between partners mean that one plus one will always equal more than two”. Can you guys confirm this? Because your both quite different artists. (please add something about your different styles and how you challenged yourself)
Yvan: To date, I’ve made lots of photo-manipulation and matte painting for clients or myself, but I have recently started to experiment a new style which is mostly made of painting. Our two styles are different but we both are polyvalent so we didn’t really had problem to mix our styles, it came simply I guess. Mart mostly worked on the background and the glass while I worked on the tiger. I know he finally didn’t made lots of circles because it didn’t really fit with the aggressiveness of the scene but we both had fun doing this.
Mart: This is more then true, every collaboration is special but also different. Yvan has a very different style then me, he is more into realistic artwork with a nice artistic touch, while I’m more into combining effects and colors to create something unique. At the end this worked out amazing, I wasn’t sure in the beginning whether our styles would match or not but the only way to find out is by trying. One plus one is definitely more then two for us, not just because of the result but also because of the hard work we put into this, their was quite a big language barrier which was hard to overcome.

Great to hear you found each other and made this work out! What can you tell more about the idea and the concept of this wallpaper?
Mart: We both knew from the start that we where going to do a freestyle project where both of our styles would really fall in place well. Thats when we started searching for stocks and I found this stock of a very aggressive looking tiger, I showed it to Aiven and he really liked it as well. After that came the part where we started brainstorming and discussion what exactly we would do with it. Shortly after, Aiven started working on the stock by painting over it, after his first 25% were done he sent it to me and the rest came by itself.
Yvan: I really wanted to express the aggressiveness of the tiger so all the lines were painted to look very aggressive and dynamic. The colors are mainly yellow, orange and red with a strong contrast of black and some white highlights. The idea of the glass explosion added details in the radial motion of the tiger so it looks like it’s jumping out of the screen. Personally, I think the final result has a strong impact and I’m happy with it.

In terms of your designing career, where would you like to be in 5 years?
Yvan: I’d probably like to continue working in the agency and create personal artworks the rest of the time, I think it’s a really cool way to live. I think working on personal artworks is a very positive thing, because you can get red off some limitation like deadline or budget, you go deeper, so you improve yourself way faster than any other method. In 5 years, i hope to get a better level and enhance my personal style.
Mart: I’m currently studying Media, Information and Communication and I hope to be finished by then. After that, I’d like to go abroad for one year to discover the world but also discover more styles. When I come back I’d like to start a business for myself and expand this business when it gets better and bigger. For me the question would be better how I’d see things in 10 years, because I’m only 17 at the moment. I’d like to own a big business in media where I play an important role in navigating the employees to get the most out of them, when it would be needed, I would also dive into the creative process of creating art myself.

To date what would you say is your favorite artwork that you have created? And why?
Mart: My favourite artwork by far is ‘Beauty of Gold’, (Sorry Yvan but I couldn’t resist picking on of my own). This is not just my favorite because of the way it looks but also because of the reason for creating it. It was done for a well known tutorial site and I really enjoyed teaching others. I created the artwork at the exact same time as writing the tutorial so it was easy for me to be very detailed in the steps. I got a lot of nice comments on the tutorial and this really made me an happier artist.
Beauty of Gold

Yvan: I really like SteamPunk IceCream which was made for SlashTHREE’s 12th art pack. As an ordinary matte painting, I worked on photo-manipulation, digital painting and little part of 3D. Matte paintings are always interesting because you have to study on so many details to make it look realistic. The artwork earned a Daily Deviation on DeviantArt so I had lots of feedback quickly and it seems people like it as I do.
Steam Punk Ice Cream

How did you learn everything you know? What do you advice beginning designers?
Yvan: I started learning from myself during some years, so it gave me a solid base to start an Art school. I think the best way to get a certificate in graphic design is to study in dual-time in agency, because you learn every technical in the print and web industry. Experience is important when you search a job and schools don’t give you a professional experience. Another point is that if you want to be better, you need to practice at home too. It doesn’t matter if this is for clients or for yourself, what you learn at school or what you do at the office is not enough… so go ahead and do things !
Mart:There is a couple of good ways to learn, in my opinion the best one is to start with experimenting and exploring the programs you are using. This is also what I did when I was still very inexperienced. After I knew more about the programs and techniques I started copying other well known artists, most people don’t like this but for me it was hard to find my own style. After I got better and better my own style came by itself, but in the meantime I learned a lot more then those who started with their own style right away. On top of this it never hurts to read some tutorials and I can really advice people to try and join art collectives like slashTHREE, the great amount of high quality criticism you get there is amazing! In short, my advice is to experiment a lot and make sure you get to know other artists and their styles!

Thank you guys for the great interview and super awesome wallpaper!