Daverana Enterprises

Janrae Frank has a quick chat with veteran Daverana cover artist Kirsten Maloney.

Tell me how you got interested in art.

Well, I've always been interested in art. I've been drawing for as long as I can remember, much to my mother's disgust! As I got older and started to get interested in TV and books, I would draw the characters I loved, and my good friends would collect them.

Where did you study art?

Well, my first formal instruction was advanced class at my High School. I dearly loved my art teachers and they believed in me. Mrs. Watson and Mr. Davis actually even used their own money to help me to apply to colleges. I finally actually wound up going to Earlham College to study pre-Law and when I realized that wasn't for me, I transferred to Purdue. I have a degree in Anthropology and in Fine Arts from there.

That's fascinating. Do you think Anthro helps you with your conceptualizations?

Certainly. Also the art history courses that I was introduced to by those lovely teachers helped too. I am influenced by Rembrandt, George LaTour and Caravaggio. The Anthro courses helped introduce me to some of the art of other cultures and I'm sure my interest in Forensic Art also helps my understanding of body structure.

Being a woman in what is still a male dominated world, have you ever faced challenges because of your gender?

Not really. I've actually encountered more discrimination because of my weight than my gender. Being online actually is good for me because my artwork speaks first before anybody can judge me based on looks. In fact, Frank Kelly Freas and Micheal Whelan who are illustration juggernauts went out of their way to look at my work and give me advice and I don't think the fact that I'm female ever entered into it.

The SF world is a lot more woman friendly that the outside world is. But you're also doing mixed media. Would you explain your approach to it?

Well, about the year 2000 or so I got introduced to computer art. It appealed to me because you can play and manipulate with the art so much more than you can on paper or canvas. I'm a tech geek by nature (my father always had to get the newest tech… i.e. the TRS-80 back in the early 80's lol) and I found there was less chance of destruction by cats and then later by children.

How do you mix being the mother of four boys and being an artist?

Well the kids come first obviously, but I always tried to set aside time for art. Otherwise I go bonkers! It really is a kind of therapy for me. I am lucky the my ex was supportive of it in a limited fashion and now my kids who are older appreciate it and even do art themselves.

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?

Well I hate to sound like an after school special (that dates me now doesn't it?) but I just think that people who are doing art should just do it. Don't worry what other people think, don't be too critical of yourself and your artwork. Have fun with it! I've seen too many people who have had their spirit crushed and gave up.

Thank you very much for an excellent interview.

Kirsten's work can be found on her DeviantArt and Zazzle accounts. She also maintains a presence on Facebook.

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Janrae Frank chats with Anne Stone, illustrator of the Dark Brothers books and one of Daverana's best artists.

Okay, tell me about your background in art and what got you started with it.

Yikes, that's a bit.

Hm, my mother put me in my first art show when I was four years old. I entered with a picture called "If the Hippo Bites the Balloon, it will Break." She wanted me to be an art teacher. She was an amateur artist, so I helped her sell paintings on the sidewalk.

Lovely image there.

My mother painted in oils. She mixed sand and junk into her paints and painted with every color she could think of. Very impressionistic. I did not like her paintings, but I was also freaked out by Dr. Suess. I wanted to paint differently.

In the time I grew up, Impressionism and Abstract were the "thing." But I had read The Lord of Rings when I was nine and wanted to write. By the time I was twelve, I knew I wanted to illustrate my own books.

No one taught realistic art. It was all cartoons and colorful, fun art like Maurice Sendak was doing.

by Anne Stone, age 12

When I was twelve, I drew a picture of a girl and thought, "when I learn to draw, I want to show everyone where I started." It was a classic picture with the sideways eye on a profile. When we went on a field trip to the Denver Art Museum, I saw the first painting that made me think, "oh, if I could paint..." It was a picture by Bouguereau of two little girls. I stared at those girls' feet for two hours while the rest of the kids toured the modern art gallery.

I begged and begged my art teachers for lessons in classical art. I got graded down whenever I tried to do anything realistic. I floundered along, trying to do art, thinking that I could not copy anyone or any style, thinking that if I were only talented enough I could paint like Maxfield Parrish.

During all this, my mother fought my friends for my paintings. She was very determined to have me go into art, but as a teacher. She did not like my taste for realism and preferred my friend's fun art. When we discovered that there were no schools in the US we could afford, she wanted to send me to the local State University for an art degree and a teaching certificate. I felt so hemmed in, as if my life were planned. I would race home after every project and hand it to her and she would say, "oh, you can do better than that." I hated art.

When I just turned 18, I ran away to Hollywood.

Wow!

I was away from my mom's influence, but I had moved out there with three artists! Talk about competitive! We decided that two of us would work while the other two tried to promote their art careers. I was the only one who could get a job. I lied my way into a bookstore and then into a country club as a clerk. I then got on as a night auditor where I could race through my work and have an hour off to draw. But my friends got into coke and other things and soon I was working 90 hours a week to support us. I slept on the floor between jobs, but still fought for my hour off to work on my books and artwork.

Ack!

Finally, after five years, I got most of the debt paid off and got back into college. My mom by then was a famous children's author. Her illustrator friends told me that my art was never going to be good enough for New York and that there were no more art schools left in the States. I took a couple of classes, but it seemed to be the case that I was never going to make the jump from amateur to professional. I did little jobs, mostly for free, because when you can draw at all, people want you to draw for them.

In college, I got tangled up with a writer. I quit college to support his career by working two jobs again. Still working at night, I could still find a bit of time for my own work. I finally decided to go back to college. The week I was accepted, I got pregnant. I decided to keep the child.

My mother told me that the baby would sleep for 16 hours a day and I would have time for my work. Hah. My son slept a total of four hours a day for the first three years. He was a very intelligent, sensitive baby who needed a lot of attention.

That would be challenging.

Two Sisters, one of Anne's later pieces.

He was so jealous of anything I did that he would smash his face into the floor if I left him alone. He talked late and was a very needy child. A friend of mine lectured me for a long time about trying to do my career and be a mom. She said that my son needed me 100 percent. So, I put my career on hold again. But that was totally worth it, for now he is a brilliant mathematician and still a sensitive man.

After a messy split with my son's father, I met my husband, who became the only man who had every supported my art. I had had one boyfriend who used to lock me out of my studio until I finished cleaning his house! We moved around a bit, but I finally got a job in an art gallery in Boulder, CO. The owner had hired me during a show of nudes I had done with supplies my husband had got me as a present. The owner was into realism in a big way. He was the first art person I had ever met whose tastes were similar to mine. I loved working with him, for I had never met anyone who loved the classics as he did.

A girl we worked with had a show at her school. We all went to support her. When I saw the school and the artwork I broke down and cried. The gallery owner knew that I was not the emotional sort, so he took me aside and told me that he would pay for me to study at this art school. I could pay him back out of my commissions from the gallery. And so, at 40 years old, I finally found a teacher who taught classical art. His teacher was a student of John Singer Sargent.

Awesome!

I knew that it would take about five years of 50 hours a week to get to the level demanded in professional illustration like I wanted to do. If you think of Arthur Rackam and Maxfield Parrish and N. C. Wyeth, you will know who I was comparing my work to! I was my own demon. Everything I did was never good enough. I was so hard headed that I could not quit. My new teacher yelled at me that I was too crazy and to relax and just enjoy art. I still hated art and hated drawing, but I was so driven by the possibility that I might get better that I spent hundreds of hours just doing heads or muscles or eyes.

Classical art training is like ballet. There is no mystery and no talent. Every move is trained in. How good you are is merely a result of how much you work at it.

My husband forced me to quit work and I realized that I had my opportunity to finally get good. I started by taking on work drawing anything and everything I was hired to draw. After three years of doing about 400 drawings a year, I began to see that I might get at the level where I would be pleased enough with the work to enjoy doing it.

After about 10,000 drawings, I was no longer throwing out half of them. And, to my surprise, I found myself starting to enjoy drawing. Really enjoying it. I have to do the best job that I am capable of doing to enjoy myself, though. Any mistake and I obsess over it and it ruins the enjoyment.

But my story proves that with patience and a great deal of just persistence and work, anyone can be an artist!

The world's only hope is now the despised Isranon, apostate Dark Brother of the Light. Eternally bound to Anksha the demon-eater, and threatened by his own people as well as the scions of the light, how can Isranon prevent the coming holocaust sweeping the planet free of life? How can he even hope to survive long enough to recover his ancestor's staff, long promised to him in prophecy? 

 Available from Smashwords and on Kindle.

Isranon and Anksha flee her estate ahead of the advancing army of the Minnorian empress. Pursued by soldiers and bounty-hunters, they fall in with a group of refugees led by a stalwart young healer who is more than she appears.

Isranon must make a deal with his hated enemy Lord Hoon in order to learn the secrets of the hellgod, Gylorean Galee. After a terrifying battle with a powerful demon, Isranon finds that both the scions of darkness and of light want him dead.

Carried off by his liege god, Dynanna, in a moment of rage, he must make his case to an even more ancient and powerful deity or die. Anksha, now more his lover than master, is forced to reveal her secrets to him on a night when the Blood Wraiths dance their madness on men’s souls.

Isranon’s mentor, Nevin, can’t help him: Nevin has been summoned to a fateful meeting with the god of wolves. 

Isranon is taken captive by an unscrupulous mercenary captain, and driven mad by tasting the blood of Anksha, the demon-eater. And in the background evil Gods struggle to become supreme in a world in which every living being is increasingly at jeopardy. As darkness deepens, can even a Dark Brother of the Light resist its onslaught? (Dark Brothers of the Light #5) 

Isranon's challenges become greater as his world grows darker. He is faced with the task of becoming not just a leader of his disparate peoples, but of becoming a lawgiver who can weld them all together, hemovores, lycans, and humans, into a force strong enough to change their world and fight the armies of the hellgod Gylorean Galee. On a more personal level, Isranon attempts to win Stygean and Jingen, two thirteen year old sa'necari boys, over to the side of the light despite the dire predictions of his friends that one of them will kill him if he doesn't kill them first. And sure enough, the boys have more than enough reason to hate Isranon, and adolescent sa'necari appetites for blood and lives are often keener than mature adults. Meanwhile the Armies of Galee are on the move at last and her demonic hosts ravage the countryside as they march toward the conquest of the continent of Merezia where they can open the Gate of the Hellgods.

Filled with misgivings Isranon attempts to weld the forces of hemovores, lycans, and humans he has brought together, knowing they can be no match for the armies of the hell-goddess Gylorean Galee. If Isranon fails, Galee will be free to throw open the Gate of the Hellgods, loosening their dark destructive powers to ravage the world.