Interview : Lukasz Pazera       

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Polish artist Lukasz Pazera received a MA in animation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland and did the short film REF (2004) as a graduation project. In his short career since graduation, he has gained professional experience in practically every aspect of CG. He has spent most of his time working as an artist in the animation industry for television commercials, music videos and short films. He has done everything from rigging and animating to matte painting, lighting and compositing, pretty much covering the whole CG pipeline. He has also worked as a programmer for games on 8bit Atari and done plug-ins for Lightwave3D.

Lately, he has drifted away from 3D and has been focusing more on concept art/design and art direction. He is also spending much more time on his personal artwork and working on his traditional painting and drawing skills. Lukasz currently lives and works as freelance artist in London.

IT’S ART: Your digital art has a real classical touch; can you tell us more about that?

Lukasz Pazera: I think part of that is the way I was taught and part of it is simply the way in which I perceive art naturally. The classical approach simply suits me. I'm probably quite old-fashioned in that I really appreciate technical skills such as line or brush stroke quality, lighting, texture, composition, etc.  These are all parts of visual language that I believe every artist should build for himself and I try to develop mine constantly. Maybe in 20 years I'll change my style completely, but I prefer to start from a solid base.

IA: Colors and brush strokes have, in my opinion, a strong role in your work. Do you agree?

LP: Definitely. Brush strokes and color are artist identifiers to me. I find it very important for my work to have a very distinctive and personal feel. It is for this reason that I also like to draw and I often think of the handwriting courses I took at the Fine Arts Academy and how much they helped me to improve my gesture.

As for colors, I try to challenge myself and use different palettes for every image. I think an atmosphere can be set just by color. However, when I paint I don’t like to "design" the color precisely, but prefer to work in a more spontaneous way and build up an image picking the colors as I work and until I get things right. Often, I actually start work, not with blank canvas, but I load some acrylics as an under-painting. I like the impression of complexity an image has when it consists of many layers of brushstrokes, while the general color composition can still remain relatively simple.