May 22nd, 2011
Biography
I have been creating fantasy images since I was a girl. Most of my artwork from my youth is centered around unicorns, dragons, horses, and like critters, and smurfs. And to this day I will deny the latter.
Most of my work was pencil and ink images up until my freshman year in college. I was introduced to the world of computer art in 1989. Our art instructor showed us this little box called an Apple SE. I had never seen a program that could take my face, place it in a program that would let me paint wings and a halo on myself. It was a start to a growing love for digital art. I still have a printed out copy of this image.
That same year I was introduced to the world of Dragonlance and the Sandman from a friend of mine. I would have to say that upon reading about Raistlin and Morphius, I was hooked. Much of my drawn art at this point started to surround the Dragonlance world and the Dream Realm.
I switched colleges in 1990 to refocus my major into the field of art. I trained in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop in my graphic art classes, and also learning "true" art skills (what my teachers called them) of painting, sculpting, drawing and theatre. In 1992 I found an outlet for my imagination and participated actively in Role Playing Games, adding music to our gaming sessions and drawing images of our group's characters for their character sheets.
In my third year of college I received my first award from Marriott Corporation for a B&W piece called Groundhog Day from my college gallery. The first time I knew that someone other than myself enjoyed my art.
In May of '94, I officially graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design.
I got my first computer as a graduation gift from college (a Performa 475), very limited capacity. I attempted to use a graphics program for my Mac, but never had enough memory to run it appropriately. The Performa was discarded for anything other than typing and games, and I returned to my pencils in frustration.
Another friend of mine showed me her computer generated artwork on a PC. My desire to do such things again got the best of me. I went to a computer convention and had a PC hand built with her guidance, and I was on my way to doing digital art. With my whopping 1 Gig HD and 256 RAM I was ready.
My desire to follow up on my favorite worlds led me to create a "What if..." version, and I began writing about Achiania, a world of my own based upon the Dragonlance world. I was also working upon fan fictions which led to my eventual creation of my first computer piece called "Phoenix." It was created on the basic generic paint program that comes with a PC. Illustrator and Photoshop were way out of my price range, so one works with what one has. Overall it was a work of pride, my first successful image created on PC.
I was never truly a part of the working graphics community, and after unsuccessfully attempting to get work in the Graphic field for many years I turned to my basic computer skills and became a secretary. During all this time I continued with my passion for character illustration in private for myself and my friends.
Today (8/30/08): Happily married with a 5 yr old son and my imagination is a wild as ever. I finally started producing images that I considered good enough to show (an artist is their own worst critic). They are as varied as my history: from B&W pencil Illustrations, to a mixture consisting of hand done sketches scanned and colored, and images done using Poser 7, Vue D'esprite, DAZStudio, and Corel Photo-Paint. I have also returned to the Macintosh platform.
I have occasionally been commissioned to depict characters, which I quite enjoy.
One cannot stifle one's creativity. We will find a way.
Joy A. Sheeley
August 30, 2008
August 30, 2008